14 DAY TRIAL // Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia launched its Ovi Store at the end of May 2009, and it seems that the application portal hasn't managed to live up to the expectations. During Noki World, Kai Oistamo, Nokia’s EVP of Devices, unveiled the fact that the Ovi Store reached a number of 10 million downloads during the first three months of availability, a number that is not that impressive after all.
According to Nokia, the average user accounted for a number of six downloads from the application portal, while there were 1.67 million users accessing the store. Compared to other leading industry players, the performance of the Ovi Store has been more than poor. For example, Apple's App Store reached 100 million downloads in the first two months of availability only.
However, moconews reports that, according to Niklas Savander, Nokia’s EVP of services, the software store had some problems 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 stated. While the reliability issues have been already dealt with, it seems that the visual appearance of the Ovi Store needs some improvements as well.
Some other issues that the application portal currently faces include the availability on a small number of Nokia devices (only 100 so far), which means that users need to download the store on their handsets to access it, the small number of languages it is available in (five at the moment), and the poor presence with local operators (only 27). However, it seems that Nokia is already aware of this state of facts and that it plans on taking measures in all these areas.
At the same time, Niklas Savander said that downloads had a growth of 50 percent from July to August, which suggests that a future rise in numbers should be expected. “It looks promising and it is meeting the aggressive plans we have,” he stated. Support for three new languages will be added to the store in 2009 (Portuguese, French and simplified Chinese), and Nokia also plans on adding more carriers to the list, including AT&T in the US. More content will come to the Ovi Store, with a number of 500 items being approved each and every week, including games, videos, podcasts, productivity tools or location-based services.