AfterDawn: News

Nokia Ovi manages 10 million downloads in three months

Nokia's Ovi Store has reached just 10 million downloads in its first three months, according to Kai Oistamo, Nokia's EVP of Devices, with the average user reportedly downloading 6 applications. The tally is a disappointing figure, to say the least, especially when compared against Apple's App Store, which surpassed 100 million downloads in just two months and reached 1.5 billion after a year.

However, there are reasons why Nokia's service hasn't taken off yet. According to Kai, the Ovi Store was marred with performance and other issues right from the start. "We totally underestimated demand on the first day. We had an outage on the first day which was not our plan," he said.



Users of compatible Nokia devices still also have to download the store to their handsets since it is not yet shipping pre-loaded onto devices. It also lacks the easy interface and usage of the iPhone App store. Niklas Savander, Nokia's EVP of services, said that the company needs to utilize its global footprint to make the store successful.

"When we have 100 countries, that's when we'll see the true potential in full swing," he said. At present, Ovi is compatible with 100 devices and is offered in five languages. It has a presence with 27 operators in eight countries. There are signs that it will experience a period of growth soon however, with its downloads rising 50 percent from July to August.

Written by: James Delahunty @ 6 Sep 2009 20:23

• Previous article

• iPhone's bandwidth use compared to gas-guzzling Hummer

• Next article

• Spotify app officially available in App Store, Android Market

• 1 comment

• canadave

  Reading this, it sounds like Nokia is saying, yes, we've got a crappy interface to our app store, and way lower sales than Apple did when they launched their store last year, even though Nokia has shipped WAY more phones that are capable of accessing their store, but their way to success is to sign up more operators in more countries, instead of, say, fixing their service so it's easier for customers to use.
  
  Of course, maybe their problem is they've crippled their phones for carriers too much, so they have to have a crappy interface... And that each of their 100's of models of phones has slightly different API/UI/hardware, making it suck for developers to support all or even some of their phones.
  
  "When we have 100 countries, that's when we'll see the true potential in full swing,"
  This is just sad, given that Apple had WAY higher sales a year ago, before anybody knew what an 'app store' was, with just 2 models of phones, and much lower actual user count than Nokia has today, with fewer countries & carriers than what Nokia has now, before this expansion.

  7.9.2009 14:39 #1