App stores are the big thing in mobile phones at the minute, with manufacturers climbing over themselves to get their own version onto their new phones. The one we’re interested in today, though, is the Ovi Store from Nokia, as a story’s appeared on Forbes, claiming the Ovi Store is going to have a huge 20,000 products, or ‘items’ as Nokia calls them, to download when it goes live.
However, what it doesn’t tell us is how many of those items are actually going to be apps, since the Ovi Store will also include music and video downloads, and there are rumours that N-Gage games will be making an appearance there, as well (but since games are basically treated as apps by everyone else in the world, I reckon it’s safe to include them).
That could take the number of actual apps down pretty considerably, but even then, it’s still exciting. Let’s be all conservative and take a completely random guess at how many actual apps there’ll be. Let’s say only 20% of the ‘items’ are actually apps… that’s still 4000 of the bleeders, vastly more than the Apple App Store, or the Android Marketplace had when they first launched. And just look how much extra software they’ve got on there, now. Seriously, you should see some of the stuff you can get on phones like the iPhone (which is up to 40,000 apps in its store) or the HTC Magic. It boggles the mind.
Yep. The Ovi Store, it gon’ be big!
So, when the Nokia N97 comes out (since it’s said to be the first phone you’ll get the Ovi Store on), there’ll be a huge selection of apps ready for you to download, and doubtless thousands more in the pipeline. And of course, since the Ovi Store can locate you through GPS (if you opt-in for it to do so), it can recommend local apps for you, like travel guides when you go to, for the sake of argument, Mablethorpe.
My only hope? They let other phones with Symbian Touch on access the Ovi Store. A Sony Ericsson Idou with a 12 megapixel camera and an extra 20,000 software doobries to download would rock quite considerably…
More news as it happens! And be sure to subscribe now to get all the latest action from the world of mobile phones!