Nokia’s very own centralized application marketplace, dubbed Ovi Store, today officially made its way to the public arena as we expected. It will have to stand up and fight against other notable mobile content stores such as Apple’s App Store, Windows Mobile Marketplace and BlackBerry’s Application Center. Nokia is rolling out the app and content store globally (with credit card support), but currently reserves operator billing for customers in Australia, Singapore, Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia, Ireland and the UK. Additional countries and languages will be added throughout the year, with AT&T planning to make Ovi Store available to its customers in the U.S. later this year.
Nokia claims more than 50 of its mobile devices are compatible with the service as of today, with more slated to roll out over time, and estimates that around 50 million people with Nokia devices will be able to license content and download applications from the Ovi Store right now. The news is now completely out there and people are testing the service like crazy, which means it can be a little slow or downright unresponsive at times.
Update: actually, the launch is a complete fail.
We’ve browsed the online store extensively and hand-picked 10 applications we think you should download and install first. Note that the available content you can download depends on which device you’re using, we’ve selected the option ‘any phone’ to increase the chances of these being available for you as well:
* Qik (Photo & video, free) – Ovi Store listing: a powerful way to share live video from your mobile phone with friends everywhere you go. MobileCrunch knew it was going to be one of the featured apps in the store back in March.
* FlyScreen (News & Info, free)- Ovi Store listing: an application that lets you add your favorite web services (in widget form) to your phone’s sleep screen, enabling zero-click access to the content you use most.
* Photobucket (Photo & video) – Ovi Store listing: lets you log in to your Photobucket account, upload photos from your phone to your album and search its public repository of photos.
* Flight Info (News & Info, free) – Ovi Store listing: key in any airline code and flight number and track terminal, departing and arrival information.
* Assassin’s Creed (Games) – Ovi Store listing: end the Third Crusade from your mobile phone. Update: seems to have disappeared from the store somehow. Alternative: Wolverine (€5).
* Twittix (Social Networks, €1) – Ovi Store listing: Yup, it’s a mobile client for Twitter.
* MobiSystems OfficeSuite 5 (Business, €20) – Ovi Store listing: OfficeSuite is a complete mobile office solution, allowing you to create, view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files away from your office. Support MS Office 2007 files.
* RISK (Games, €5) – Ovi Store listing: Enjoy the classic board game playing against up to five cunning computer opponents, each with distinctive tactics and unique levels of aggression.
* AP News (News & Info, free) – Ovi Store listing: Yes, we know, it’s AP, but this app does give you a good overview of breaking news and photo galleries to boot.
* World Traveler (Utilities) – Ovi Store listing: allows travelers to plan and manage journey activities and provides instant access to relevant information and services. Update: seems to have disappeared from the store somehow. Alternative: WorldMate 2009 (free).
May be helpful if you include the price for the apps in the post.
agree, updating now
woah some of these look awesome
they were classically disrupted by RIM and apple. One for the business school studies.
totally. but I wouldn’t count them out just yet.
> * Assassin’s Creed (Games) – Ovi Store listing: end the Third Crusade from your mobile phone.
It’s no longer available in the store… The link says so…
Oh I would, you should see the future roadmaps, lame
“Ovi
Permission denied
This service is not available in your area.
* © Nokia 2009″
Not available in Pakistan ;(
Try anonymouse.org to get the content from ovi store… Here in India its working fine…
sorry it seems it’s not a country-wide issue, some ISP’s can access it and some can’t.
@ Salman , which ISP is able to access it , I’ve tried LDN , MAXCOM even WARID none access it so I moved to Opera TOR and here are the results
finally able to access it in Pakistan \
http://senseapp...re-in-pakistan/
Service not available in Pakistan. Why developing world is always deprived from basic things, and then we say a global world.
sorry
Updated the post with pricing, but 3 out of 10 disappeared from the store. I think these are just glitches though, the service has been really unreliable ever since it came live.
There seems to be no support for E51
Funny enough, you can’t use your ovi.com account details to log in to store.ovi.com! Ain’t that being stupid?
When I click on FlyScreen link, OVI says that option is no longer available
Also, it throws up error that my username already exists or password does not match when I am creating a fresh account!
This thing is just a mess
I can’t even understand how to browse between apps and see reviews.
Pages fail to load here and there.
It seems to me that this is not ready at all
Nokia products kick ass, and I hope this works great for them. I’m so sick of all those snot pots with their I phones. To put the nail in the competitions coffin, they need to have some amazing phones at great price points to further involve the consumer. Nokia , just get your shit together and make this blow everyone away.
They should hire Obama’s PR/Marketing peeps.
Same phones, different shells
Don’t innovate and fall behind, simple as
Yups !! The ovi store is kicking AppStore now !!! Check out the cool S60 client now!!!!
Too much traffic?
The guys at Nokia are really missing the point here!
The Apple App Store is about getting all the details right and making a great customer experience – the Ovi App Store is not even near in experience.
1. I clicked on a link above from your post and got a blank screen (short term problem I hope).
2.I can’t register with the unique name I use – because it is already registered – but I can’t login with it either. This I think as previously commented that store.ovi.com accounts are different to ovi.com accounts.
3.Ovi sent an SMS to my phone – to confirm my number – but no SMS with how to install the App Store!
We have content published in the Ovi App Store – but I am not expecting much revenue from it based on this experience.
How are they going to contact all the people who this should be targeted at and get them to install on their phone? If I am very interested in getting on my phone and so far can’t what chance do consumers have?
I think that the comment about disruption above is spot on – and there are a few more months of that case study to pan out – but my feeling there is going to need to be an OVI 2.0 (maybe even a Nokia 2.0) before this gets anywhere near to the Apple App Store
Yeah, they messed up.
http://www.tech...plete-disaster/
Robin Have you seen the S60 client !!!! I do say you are frog who needs to come out of his iphone well
I can’t seem to get Flyscreen to download for my E71, but from the flyscreen website I found https://myflysc...en.appspot.com/
it looks like a great nonintrusive way to get the information I want! If only OVI would let me get to it!!
actually it’s hard for developers to start programing for it. You need to have a business. you cannot do free software. I will stick with Apple & iPhone
know what happened to ur stocks.
start witting good/bad messages for ur stock operator @ http://www.stockstheory.com
First, when I tried to use the site, it did not work.
I believe this store will have a bigger customer base outside of the USA, because Nokia is very popular in Europe and M.E.
Mark
http://www.onlyjust.net
Err whats with the prices? Many of Apple’s products are at impluse buy prices — who thinks twice of spending 0.59p (~$1) for a bit of software.
When I look at the Ovi prices, most cost 3 to 4 times more and some are outrageously expensive.
Nokia, selling software this way is a volume game — if its too expensive, it just wont sell.
I look forward to the sale prices.
James
What’s with prices, James? That’s how people get paid in the real world. For things that are actually worth something.
The volume game works for fast food and the App Store. So, you just keep looking forward to those “sale” prices by VC-backed SV twits who have no idea where they’re going.
What are you still standing around here for? You just missed six new fart programs.
Obviously, a biiiiiiigggg uphill climb ahead of them if they ever want to gain traction with this.
I just stumbled upon the Ovi site and yes “Update: actually, the launch is a complete fail.”
I always used Getjar.com to get my Nokia apps for free anyway. Getjar just got better because I found their m.getjar.com site on my phone and it auto detected my N95 with no problem.
it still wont work in pakistan on any ISP – is there a way around this?
never mind – it works now.