Symbian apps store coming soon?

 

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By Dawinderpal Sahota

Posted on 9 Feb 2009 at 12:51

Nokia is preparing to launch its own Symbian online applications store, according to reports.

The store would enable Nokia to provide direct software downloads to more than 100 million users with phones running on the Symbian platform.

Symbian is the most popular mobile platform in the world, and despite there being a wealth of mobile applications available for Symbian smartphones, there's currently no central place to find and download these applications.

Rival Apple launched its own iPhone App Store last summer, and has already amassed 500 million downloads. RIM followed Apple's lead, and created the Blackberry Application Storefront.

If Nokia can make it easy for users to download applications, while keeping the developers happy with equitable revenue sharing, a Nokia store could quickly replicate Apple's success.

According to reports, the Finnish mobile phone giant could be unveiling the service as early as next week, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where Microsoft is also expected to release launch its own Windows Mobile app store., alongside Windows Mobile 6.5 and its new phone sync service, My Phone.