Nokia?s Ovi Store is open for business to 50 million users
Nokia launch Ovi Store for both free and charged mobile content and applications
Handset manufacturer
Nokia has today
announced the opening of its long-awaited application and content store, Ovi.
Ovi is available initially on 50 Nokia handsets, including the soon-to-be-launched Nokia N97, to approximately 50 million users. Users can access to the Ovi store directly via their handset, or alternatively by accessing the Ovi website they can send content to their PC desktop and send to their handset at a later device. Content available to users includes applications, games, videos, podcasts, productivity tools and location based services.
Nokia?s executive vice
president of Nokia Services Tero Ojanpera says, ?Ovi Store is open for business and we?ve stocked the shelves with both local and global content for a broad range of Nokia devices. Ovi Store makes shopping for content and applications easy and fun for feature phone and smartphone owners alike.?
Ovi is multi-lingual compatible and supports network operator billing in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Singapore, Spain and the United Kingdom. United States network AT&T is planning to introduce Ovi to its customers towards the end of 2009.
Commenting on the
Ovi blog, Eric John who heads up Ovi?s product marketing says that the number one goal of the service is to help users discover the potential of their device. He says, ?Ovi Store is ? at the end of the day ? all about what?s inside.? John goes on to outline some of his favourite applications available in the Ovi store, including Gravity for Twitter, location based services EarthComber which helps travellers find things to do and speed-camera warning app Trapster.
Ovi enters a competitive market, with clear leader Apple already seeing over
one billion downloads from its App store. Earlier this month, mobile network Vodafone announced its forthcoming move into the
mobile application space, launching its own app store. The world?s largest network is also developing a cross-platform developer kit ? allowing application developers to develop for the Vodafone network as opposed to having to develop separate applications for individual handsets.
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