Nokia Announces OVI Store, Pits It Against Android Marketplace and App Store

Mobile application stores seems to be the flavour of this year’s Mobile World Congress, as after Google, the Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia has also unveiled its signature mobile applications store for its wide range of smartphones. 

The new application store, codenamed as “Ovi Store”, is all set to be available on more than 50 million S40 and S60 powered handsets across the globe. 

Though the service perceptibly follows Apple hugely popular iTunes applications store, Nokia says that its Ovi store will recommend its users' applications based on their geographical locations; in addition, the company claimed that the new store will figure out users’ tastes over the passage of time and eventually design its recommendations accordingly.  

The new apps store from Nokia will be available as a downloadable application, and the first mobile phone that will come bundled with the new apps store will be Nokia N97, which is scheduled to hit the market by June this year. 

Content creators will be allowed to submit their applications for consideration through the website Publish.ovi.com, and Nokia will be charging 30 percent of the revenues earned from selling applications on its platform. 

Nokia announced that its new apps store will be rolled out with contents from some of the prominent names of the industry, including Facebook, MySpace, EA, and lonely Planet. 

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