Nokia Ovi Store Launched: “It’s A Smart Store.”
How could I have forgotten possibly the most interesting announcement out of Nokia this morning!
They began by stating the mainstream nature of apps, plus the fact that 50% of 18-24 year olds access social networking sites via their mobiles. Soon after, my App Store senses began to tingle…
Nokia recognised that application stores need to be quicker to access from a handset, and also anticipatory of a user’s contextual needs by offering access to location-aware content.
Presenting…the Ovi Store!
The store will deliver games, applications, widgets and media. It will be location aware to offer apps related to your current location, and even show items that your friends have downloaded!
Nokia even goes so far as to suggest that the Ovi service will be a ‘smart store,’ offering a Tivo-style suggestion of apps that you may want to download based on previous choices!
The coolest thing is that the Ovi Store is in fact backwardly compatible for earlier Symbian S40 and S60 powered handsets, not just the latest smartphones like the E71 or multimedia devices like the 5800 XpressMusic.
With the same 70/30 revenue share for developers as another famous online application vendor, selling wares on the Ovi Store is a promising proposition for big business and backroom coders alike! Big businesses have definitely signed on, EA, Facebook, Lonely Planet and Fox Mobile are already on board with more to follow.
With the service rolling out in a modular fashion from June 2009 (which they let slip is the Nokia N97‘s launch month!), Ovi Store will be a ready made marketplace for over 1 billion compatible handsets all over the world.
That is something even the App Store cannot hope to compete with…
Tags: Mobile World Congress, Mobile World Congress 2009, Nokia, ovi store
[...] saw Nokia brought along an extension of existing services under the umbrella of Ovi Store, Microsoft announced their Windows Mobile Marketplace, Palm’s new Pre has a webOS Software [...]