04 September 2009

Ovi Store Hits Only 10 Million
Downloads In First Three Months

According to MoCo News, Nokia consumers have downloaded 10 million pieces of multimedia content, applications and games from the Ovi Store since its official launch couple of months ago.

In addition, Nokia has also confirmed that the average Ovi user has done six downloads, meaning that roughly there’s 1.67 million users of the store, which has something with fact that users must download and install client application to the handset themselves since it is not yet shipping on all supported devices.

Comparing everything and anything to the iPhone is common practice today, and I can't avoid it either. Ten million of downloads appears impressive at first sight but Given Nokia numbers are less impressive considering that Apple has surpassed 100 million downloads in the first two months and that average HTC G1 user has downloaded about 40 apps comparing it to just six downloads of an average S60 owner.

Niklas Savander, executive vice president of services & software for Nokia, said that to truly leverage Nokia’s global footprint, it will have to deploy the store in more languages and make sure local operators have integrated billing.

“When we have 100 countries, that’s when we’ll see the true potential in full swing.” Today, the Ovi Store supports 100 devices, five languages and is on 27 operators in eight countries that support carrier billing.

Ovi downloads were up 50 percent from July to August, he pointed out, which could suggest that a new fast-growth period is ahead for the app store. “It looks promising and it is meeting the aggressive plans we have.”