When Nokia announced its Ovi Store at Mobile World Congress this February, two of its key selling points to developers were scale and smartness.

Scale, because it will support 50 million handsets at launch, and smartness because it'll help users make sense of any app clutter with personalised recommendations.

However, it seems many developers, particularly in the US, remain unconvinced. To say the least.
VentureBeat reports on an entertaining controversy sparked by a conference panel debate moderated by UK blogger Ewan MacLeod, who asked a bunch of top iPhone developers why they weren't supporting non-Apple platforms and app stores.

It seems his suggestion that Silicon Valley developers were a bit myopic when it comes to iPhone rivals touched a nerve, since a follow-up story catalogues the expressions of rage about the shortcomings of these other platforms.

Or, as developer/blogger Mike Rowehl put it in an excellent reaction piece:

“I’ve developed for just about every platform, and I know the ecosystem extremely well. It’s not that I’m blind to everything else. I know everything else that’s out there, and because of that I’ve chosen to develop for iPhone... Is the Nokia store supposed to challenge Apple? Or Microsoft supposed to? Or RIM? You know what folks, you had your chances. If you want to impress me, if you want me to start developing for your platforms again, get your houses in order.”

Neither side in this debate is right or wrong, of course. MacLeod was absolutely right to pose the question (and even more so given the ensuing hoo-ha), while Rowehl and other developers have made some piercing criticisms of Apple's rivals.

But the whole debate should be required reading for Nokia's Ovi Store boffins. Scale is all well and good, but developers are clearly going to judge Ovi Store on other grounds too - everything from revenue shares to certification to fragmentation to developer tools to...

Well, you get the point. And the same applies to Android Market, BlackBerry App World, Windows Marketplace for Mobile and the rest.