Nokia's Ovi app store opens - to an ovation?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 26 May 2009 07:11

Opinion and Analysis

Opening slightly earlier than expected, at least in some parts of the world, is Nokia’s Ovi Store, set to do battle with Apple’s App Store and bring a better “Download!” experience to Nokia phone owners.

The news has come this morning of an early Nokia Ovi Store release for some Nokia owners in some countries around the world courtesy of David Flynn over at APCMag.com.

As Flynn explains, checking to see if your Nokia offers the Ovi store right now is easy – open up the “Download!” icon, let it load, click on “Options” and then “Refresh Content”, then go to “Nokia Extras” and if you see the Ovi icon there, click on it to download it!

I too have an E75 I’m testing and so followed those instructions which worked perfectly. Downloading only takes a minute or two, after which the Ovi store installs itself and places itself into your “Applications” folder.

However I also tried the same trick on a Nokia N85 and had no luck - as yet.

Opening up Ovi Store (on the E75) gives an experience that is somewhat reminiscent of Apple’s App Store experience, with the App Store clearly showing other phone manufacturers how to best create an online store experience.

This is clearly important, because Nokia has already had, for years, its own “Download!” app store, but instead of presenting the software to you in an Apple App Store style list, Download! Instead presented apps as menu icons, similar to any standard Nokia “grid” patterned menu.

Had Nokia’s original “Download!” store been anywhere near as successful as Apple’s App Store has clearly been (what with according to Apptism has over 43,000+ programs and Apple reporting over 1 billion downloads) then Apple may well have been "copying" Nokia rather than the other way around.

At present, there’s some free and paid apps, some Star Trek movie trailers, games, utilities and more. But can it beat Apple?

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