GLOBAL – Mosh is closing. Although this is news to some, it was actually announced back at Mobile World Congress, though in a less obvious form. This from the official press release at Mobile World Congress “The Ovi Store will consolidate the best experiences from the current content services including Download!, MOSH and WidSets to a single channel”. Mosh has been around for a couple of years now and by all accounts has been pretty successful. It was pretty revolutionary when it launched (still is, I reckon) in enabling users to create and share all sorts of content (it’s the all sorts, which seems to be exciting some people). The decision to take the best of Mosh, along with the best of Download! and WidSets and merge it all into one place is a solid one. Why maintain three or four services when you can get one to do the whole lot better.
I’m really excited about the arrival of Ovi Store. Sure, I’ll miss Mosh and all its own eccentricities (though I don’t use it a huge amount, it’s good to dip into now and then) and I’m sure plenty of others will too. But there’s so much more to be had from Ovi Store. How can we be sure? Well, George Linardos is the guy who started MOSH. Guess what he’s doing now? Yep, top man at Ovi Store. MocoNews did an interview with him recently which is well worth a read. Our own video interview is currently stuck inside Charlie’s hard drive and despite our best efforts, we’ve yet to prise it out (it’s coming soon, I promise, ed.).
We wrote the other day about the developer summit happening in Monaco next month. With Ovi Store front and center, there’ll be plenty there for developers to get their teeth into. The upshot of that of course is that there’ll be plenty for us to get our teeth into when the store launches (no, I don’t know when either, apart from sometime before the summer).
What’s more, a big part of Mosh’s success was its availability. Hugely popular in places like India, it’s this availability which will be key to replicate when it comes to Ovi Store. And the signs are, that’s going to be the case. With an expected 3-400 million users within a few years the Ovi Store has a solid future.
We’ve not had a peek inside the Ovi Store yet, so can’t say what aspects of Mosh, Download! and WidSets will be included. It would be good though, to get your thoughts on what you think should be included. Any ideas?