The Ovi Store Is Growing Fast, but Nokia Still Faces an Uphill Battle ~ CK

Monday, October 4, 2010

The Ovi Store Is Growing Fast, but Nokia Still Faces an Uphill Battle

4:28 PM

Kakrona Chan

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Nokia is touting some impressive numbers for Ovi and the Ovi Store today, including surpassing 2.3 million daily application downloads. It faces an uphill battle though in its quest to catch up with Apple and Google.

The Ovi Store has only been around since May 2009, but Nokia is touting not only 2.3 million app downloads per day (an increase from 2 million just a few weeks ago), but it also claims that 70 developers have surpassed 1 million downloads for their applications.

The phone manufacturer also announced that Ovi is signing up 200,000 new users per day and is available in a staggering 190 countries. The company even listed some of its most successful application developers, including Fring, HeroCraft (creators of a game calledFarm Frenzy), Offscreen Technologies (which has over 34 million downloads), and Shazam.

The numbers are certainly impressive, especially considering that the Ovi Store is just 16 months old. But as we’ve noted before, Nokia is hurting because of its lack of a killer smartphone. It’s a big reason why Nokia hired former Microsoft president Stephen Elop as its new CEO.

Earlier today, I had breakfast with Tero Ojanpera, executive vice president, Nokia services. I asked him about these issues, specifically whether Nokia could create a competitive mobile experience to Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android OS. While he said the Nokia N8 is a step towards Nokia making a comeback, he pointed to MeeGo, the new mobile OS being created by Nokia and Intel, as an even more important milestone in Nokia’s effort to make a smartphone comeback.

There’s no question that Apple and Google are ahead of the game. Apple recently touted over 6.5 billion iOS app downloads, and attention by consumers and developers for its app store dramatically overshadows Nokia’s Ovi Store.

Nokia may be making progress, but it has a lot more work to do in order to take on Apple and Google. It needs the hardware and software to compete with iPhone and Android devices. MeeGo may be what settles the question fo whether Nokia can build a killer smartphone.

[via mashable]