DISQUS

There are plenty of mobile developers in Belfast and N.E. England who would love to start on £3,500 per month. Plus Nokia would get EC grants to set up shop there.
And what about India, Manilla - Phillipines (Friendster moving development centre here!), Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam. BTW the bulk of Nokia Smartphone shipments are not to rich western markets. £3,500 would get you a team here!

Oh you are so right the Ovi program is a nightmare.
First of all submitting apps to the store for QA requires a genius. [Did the designers look at GetJar or Mobango - I think not]. Then there is the lengthy QA process with NO FEEDBACK or EXPECTATION SETTING.
When you eventually get published and you want to see how it is doing and you find the REPORTING TOOL DOES NOT WORK YET!
Then you play with the Ovi store to see what it is like. Nice send to a friend feature you think - except that it doesn't let you access you phonebook. And if you walk out of WiFi and want to change you access point you can't - you have to shut the app and restart it. Some kind of retailing that is!
The also app eats your battery so don't dare spend too long in the store.
As for the user experience of searching did the UI desgner come from the planet Zark!
And there's more!
Last week I updated the firmware on my E71 to get a Nokia Maps that could actually find a postcode. 100mb download a 30 minute plus process and no Ovi store installed on my phone - WTF! This looks like a disjointed organisation to me that needs to up its game if it is to attract developers and maintain its market lead.
Nokia should start by getting a panel of mobile developers together and oay them to critique their processes and experiences and design it properly. In fact hire me!

Then they should take 0% from the first 100 million downloads and commit a very large sum to above the line marketing like Apple. This would encourage developers to invest!

Nice piece Ewan. One very important point that hasn't been made is which markets the 400m Ovi handsets will be in? iPhone is owned by aspirational rich westerners in the US and Europe. Nokia has almost no presence in the US, great market share share in Europe and 80% plus market share in India, Indonesia, Vietnam etc.
It is easy to calculate the relative value of a customer in each of these markets. Just set yourself up with an AdMob account and look at the typical bids for text ads in each market.
Now I am not saying that non-western markets are worthless, far from it. The prices might well be lower but the volumes are much larger.
I will do more work on this an dpost on my blog back2revenue.typepad.com

Jason good luck to you and the folks at Mahalo. I was there in 91and restructured a business (with revenue and substantial margin) to hit the breakeven ahead of the recession curve.
We won and those that we laid off were strong and went on, many stronger than they were before, You can't fuck around with this or you end up with the death of a thousand cuts.
Work out what your cost base has to be, work out what has to be done and the best team that you have (not necessarily the most senior or fun to be with) to get that job done and for sure stay avoid the potential sob stories and get on with it. The quicker the faster ther better.
We came out the other side bigger better and stronger.
The world is not coming to an end. If what you do is truly valuable you will survive this trial by ordeal.
Be honest with your investors and creditors they need to share in both the up and down. side.
By all means renegotiate that lease and the option program but most of all stop navel gazing and get back on with the the business that you have a mandate to deliver.

FROM THE UK.
When I signed up they were only supporting US Zip codes. Thinks "Now where I wonder might I find a Zip code?" Hint search for US Zip:)
Might be fun and even help Pandora if every international signup wanting to use this back door took advantage of the same US Zip - say the head office of a major music label.