Ovi is not designed to support N900 well.

#1 : If you are a publisher, neither Ovi nor N900 can offer to you a DRM mechanism to protect your application from cloning and re-distributing freely. So, you need to build in some kind of DRM mechanism yourself and operate a web service in addition to Ovi to register and grand the keys to legit users.

#2 : If, by any chance, your app depends on libraries from fremantle-extras, there is no easy way for your app to trigger dependencies installation. There is a firewall between Ovi repository and frematle-extras. Some people provide a meta-package in extras and ask users to install it as a part of post-install process from Ovi -- but that is by no mean a reasonable solution.

#3 : Profit sharing with Ovi is to say the least *misleading*. Counting in (or out) operator transaction fees, you might expect only about 25 cents on a dollar charged to the end user *before* currency conversion and wire fees charged by your local bank. So, if you are in US selling your app in EU, you would have hard time actually making any money. Don't forget that you would also need to pay your Fed/State taxes to IRS as paying taxes from revenue is publisher's responsibility.

#4 : Revenue distribution -- is done by Nokia every 90 days if it reaches $500.0. If not, end of business year.

#5 : To publish your app with Ovi, you would need:

1. TaxID
2. Website for your product
3. e-mail address for product support
4. Company logo
5. $1M insurance to cover your content.
6. Pay $50 to register as publisher

#6 : Pass Ovi's Q/A -- Ovi staff in no rush to help you get your app to the market. From what I gather, it might take 2 month for it to appear in the store.

So, the bottom line, Ovi for Maemo5 is a joke not worth of even considering, IMHO.

Before you dive in, carefully read Ovi's Publisher Terms & Conditions and consider your options.

Realistically, your options are either

1. Publish via Fremantle Extras nonfree.
2. Publish from your own .deb repository.

Both options would require from you to run a web-based business shop and implement your own DRM.

I believe, both options have been used by people here.

Clearly, N900 Maemo5 still remains a hack cultural device not meant by its creators to seriously grow a commercial following of any kind.

The MeeGo, on the other hand, would offer DRM lock-down from bottom up and I am sure Nokia would improve Ovi store experience for MeeGo device.

If people familiar with this issue have first-hand experience to sell and deliver paid contents to N900, I would be more than grateful for them to correct me in any way and to share their thoughts and experiences.