14 DAY TRIAL // Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia launched its Ovi Store a few weeks ago, and the content portal seems to have become a rather popular place for a wide range of users. As such, the company already made public some stats regarding the download preferences of those that access the portal. The big surprise is that the top downloaded app is not a free one, as anyone would have believed before, but a paid one.
Called “Digital Alarm Clock,” the most downloaded app from Ovi Store shows a digital clock on the screen of the phone, and costs £1.50 ($2.43). Interestingly, the current bestseller on the portal is Twitter client Gravity, which is priced £8.00 ($13), though this shouldn't be too much of a surprise given the fact that the phone maker also says that the most popular apps across the 152 countries are messaging solutions like Twitter, Facebook and SMS ones.
Other statistics have been published as well, and they show that more than 75 Nokia mobile phones have now support for the Ovi Store, including the flagship N97, which comes with the store preloaded. In addition, the phone maker also announced that 27 operators around the world now offer carrier billing for the portal, and that the store features five different languages. The most downloads from Ovi Store come from Germany, Italy, Spain, UK and the US (enumerated in an alphabetical order, not by top downloads).
It seems that the downloads at the Ovi Store managed to exceed Nokia's expectations. Although the service saw a rather bumpy launch, a lot of things have been worked on, and a variety of new content has been added as well, including some of the popular applications that were unavailable at launch.
One more thing that should be noted is that the applications found at Ovi Store seem to be priced differently from those on other portals, such as Apple’s App Store. One such example would be Shazam, the music identification application, which is priced at $4.99 on the Ovi Store but is offered for free at Apple's App Store. According to a Shazam spokesperson, the company planned to charge for all of its applications, so that they will be available at the same price across different portals.