Nokia unveils ‘Ovi Store’

Nokia is treading the path of Apple's 'App Stores' by unveiling its new online software and media store dubbed as 'Ovi Store,' on the sidelines of the GSMA Mobile World Congress trade fair in Barcelona.

The frenzied announcement of opening stores by Microsoft and now by Nokia follows the runaway success of 'Apple's App Stores' launched last year, which provides applications for the and iPod Touch, iTunes music and multimedia.

Nokia will include other partners to the store like social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace Lonely Planet and Fox Mobile Group, EA Mobile and Glu Mobile among others.

After its launch in May in nine countries, Nokia will offer a range of content including applications, games, videos, widgets, podcasts, location-based applications and personalised content.

Nokia said the Ovi Store will have the ''best experiences'' from its current application-distribution efforts, including Download, MOSH and WidSets.

At the GSMA Mobile World Congress trade fair in Barcelona, Nokia has unveiled two new smartphones, the E75 and the E55 and two GPS navigation phones. The E55 is being touted as the "world's thinnest smartphone", while the E75 is a qwerty side-slider phone.

Meanwhile tens of millions of existing S60 and Series 40 devices will be able to take advantage of the store from May. Ovi Store will be unique in its ability to target content based on where you are, when you're there, why you are where you are and who else has downloaded similar content, according to the company.

Ovi Store will include a 'social discovery' feature, where users can discover which content is being used by their social network users, as they will automatically be highlighted and it could be download on their devices.

Music won't be available through the Ovi Store and the Nokia Music Store will continue to be separate.

Nokia, the global leader in manufacturing mobile-phone, expects that nearly 300 million users will use the store by 2012 and it would part with 70 per cent of revenues from the store, to software developers.

Ovi Store shoppers would be able to pay for applications using either a credit card or through their operator´s billing system.

Apple said last month that currently the App Store has nearly 15,000 applications available as thousands of developers create new applications and add them to the site everyday and the site has recorded with nearly 500 million hits in just over six months.