Another App Store opens: Nokia Ovi

If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, then the mobile industry has the highest of praise for the iTunes App Store.  Nokia has followed Blackberry, WinMob and Android in releasing their very own App Store called Ovi. 

..owners of around 50 different Nokia devices can download applications, games, videos and podcasts. The store consolidates services, including Download!, MOSH and WidSets into a one-stop-shop for free and paid content. The store offers 20,000 different items, and can be accessed by 50 million Nokia device owners, the company said. Visitors to the store can choose to view all items, or only those compatible with their phone. The necessary software client is available in English, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. There is support for operator billing in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Singapore, Spain and the U.K. In the rest of the world users pay using credit cards. U.S. mobile operator AT&T Inc. will offer integrated support for the Ovi store later this year.

The only "advantage" we can see here is that Ovi is integrated with the carriers so apps can be put on the telephone bill. We use quotes because we wouldn’t want it this way but there are those out there who might.

 Tech Crunch mentions that the rollout isn’t going so well.