20,000 items in Nokia's Store at launch

Author: Gareth Halfacree
Published: 11th May 2009
Comments (7) Stumble
20,000 items in Nokia's Store at launch

Nokia's Ovi Store will have a startling 20,000 items in its catalogue at launch - but many of these will be video and audio content.

Many mobile manufacturers are eager to hop onto the application store bandwagon having seen the phenomenal success that Apple has enjoyed with the iPhone App Store – and now it looks like Nokia is set to make a major splash in the market.

With Apple having enjoyed remarkable success with the App Store for its iPhone and iPod Touch ranges it wasn't long before other companies decided they wanted a piece of the action: Microsoft was quick to recruit for a Windows Mobile-oriented online software store, and was closely followed with Google's announcement that it would support paid-for applications on its own Android Market site.

Now it's the turn of Finnish mobile giant Nokia. While the company has already enjoyed a modicum of success with a range of pay-to-own services – including the over-the-air purchase options included in the Nokia Maps satellite navigation software and its N-Gage gaming service – this marks the first time the company has jumped into a centralised software purchasing system.

According to an article over on Forbes, the company's Ovi Store – named for the Finnish word for “door” – is going to be a big entry into the market: with Nokia's vice president of services Niklas Savander claiming that it will launch with a 20,000 strong catalogue it would become the second-biggest mobile store currently available.

There's already a slight hitch with Savander's figures, however: that 20,000 item figure sure sounds good, but it turns out that Nokia has been diluting things down a bit by offering both applications and “lots of entertainment and media files.” By including video and audio content in the catalogue, Nokia is able to make the store seem significantly larger.

Even taking this into account, it's still a major offering on Nokia's part. Due to ship with the launch of the N97 later this year – with a separate Ovi Store download available for older handsets – Apple could finally have some competition in the mobile application marketplace.

Glad to see Nokia is trying to catch up with the might of the iPhone, or have you been burned too many times in the past with the company's previous efforts in this sector? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
Quote Krikkit 11th May 2009, 15:36
Sounds good to me. Will the legacy-compatible apps be restricted to Nokias, or can we use them on any Symbian handsets?
Quote Gremlin 11th May 2009, 15:59
I've been waiting for this store for ages, i still think they have totally cocked up the launch though, they didn't say what date it will be released, they just said 'May' which is pretty crap if you think about it

They want to launch the store to rival the different app stores around now right? then they should have launched it something like May 1st rather than leaving everyone guessing, they also have done **** all advertising behind it etc, You'd think that any half way intelligent company with so many phones out there would be running advertisements in the papers, on the TV and have them pop up all over the web informing those people who would otherwise never know about it that 'Ovi store coming xx/05/09' etc

Are they honestly intent on setting it to fail with NO advertising behind the launch to hype it up etc? Do they just expect everyone to learn once its up and running, then get all upset when they realise they are not meeting their predicted numbers because nobody knows about it?

Epic Marketing Fail.....
Quote p3n 11th May 2009, 16:32
Symbian is the worst OS ever dot dot dot
Quote Yemerich 11th May 2009, 16:37
@Gremlin

Remember that almost unknow online store? Steam? Almost no advertising on its launch.. Some here and there.

Perhaps it's kinda "open beta" thing...
Quote Gremlin 11th May 2009, 18:50
Yea, difference is Steam didnt have a major competitor that offered the same sort of thing on the scale that say the Apple App Store is around etc, and lets not forget Nokia's money woes or whatever, they need something to get people buying their phones over iPhone's, i'm one of those people that only entertain the idea of an iphone simply for the apps, so Nokia has a serious chance here to get an injection of much needed cash if it does it right
Quote D-Cyph3r 11th May 2009, 20:23
Quote:
Originally Posted by p3n
Symbian is the worst OS ever dot dot dot



I concur.




Going from a Symbian N series to a Google G1 really shows how outdated, slow and all together outclassed Nokia is.
Quote ch424 11th May 2009, 20:33
There's already an 'app store' for S60, but it's called 'Download!' and it's crap.

Nokia need to get their act together. I'm hoping Samsung make something really good out of S60. The OmniaHD looks incredible.
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