14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that another App Store is coming our way, this time from the Finnish giant phone maker Nokia. According to the latest news on the Web, the company plans to launch an application portal at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week.
Eldar Murtazin reports that the new Nokia app store has been already brought to life, and that it is currently running in a closed mode. “At first glance, for now, the app portal looks so so, there is some confusion. But they are trying, polishing it and a lot has changed for the better in a matter of days. A right step in a right direction… And the distribution and revenue sharing model between app makers and Nokia looks very attractive.”
The giant mobile phone manufacturer was expected to launch its own application store for quite some time now, mainly due to the fact that other companies have launched their app portals lately, including Samsung, RIM (Research in Motion), as well as Google for its Android platform, and Microsoft for the Windows Mobile OS, which join Apple, the pioneer in the area.
In addition, as the Symbian platform is one of the most popular operating systems for smartphones, a large number of interesting applications out there were expected to be included in a store that would allow users to find them much easier than before. So far, no easy solution to find the apps was available for users, and most of them would rather stop seeking.
Up until recently, handset vendors weren't too fond of launching app stores for their products, as they considered that the portals wouldn't see the same popularity as the desktop software apps. The launch of Apple's App Store proved the opposite, as it registered 500 million downloads and the number keeps rising. Following Samsung last week, this time Nokia is on its way to get such a portal up and running.