Nokia opens doors on Ovi apps store

 

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By Stuart Turton and Reuters

Posted on 26 May 2009 at 08:36

Nokia has opened the doors on its much-anticipated online apps store, Ovi, as it looks to replicate Apple's success.

The apps store was initially opened in Australia and Singapore on Monday, but the mobile phone maker has now begun flipping the switch on other territories.

Nokia claims around 50 million Nokia phone users can access the shop, which will recommend applications based on geographical location. Nokia also claims the store will learn your tastes over time and tailor its recommendations accordingly.

The store will be pre-integrated in the N97 handset, due in June, and will be available as a download for S40 and S60 handsets.

Content creators will be able to submit their apps for consideration to the Publish.ovi.com site, with Nokia taking 30% of the revenue from those that are sold on its site.

The launch of Ovi follows the similar high profile rollouts of services such as N-Gage and Comes with Music, which have so far failed to capture the public imagination.

The Apple App Store has proved extremely popular, with one billion applications downloaded in less than a year, and operators and technology firms including Vodafone Nokia, and Microsoft now want a piece of the pie.

However, analysts say firms will likely struggle to match the success of Apple's store when creating their own stores, hampered by technical issues, a lack of applications and increased competition.

"Nokia's Ovi store is a step in the right direction but Apple is still the king of the hill when it comes to selling applications," says Ben Wood, research director at CCS Insight.

"The long awaited arrival of Nokia's Ovi Store lacks the blaze of publicity Apple was able to achieve when its App Store burst onto the market. Nokia is going to have to spend a small fortune on marketing to make consumers aware of what it is offering," he adds.

However, Nokia does have sheer scale on its size. It sells more than 400 million phones a year, compared with Apple's 20 million iPhones.