Ovi Store opens for business

John Chan | May 26, 2009

Update (26/05, 8.47am GMT): This post has been edited to clarify the availability of country-specific Ovi Stores.

Nokia today officially launched the Ovi Store. This is the Finnish company's answer to services like the App Store for the iPhone and the Android Market for Android smartphones. The Ovi Store allows developers to list their programs in an online catalog so users can easily download or buy them.

More than 50 Nokia devices are compatible with the Ovi Store and it can be accessed by visiting store.ovi.com on the browser or downloading the standalone application to your phone. We tried it on our E71 and it worked on both the browser and through the application. The first game we successfully installed did crash our phone, but we'll put that down as the fault of the app rather than the Ovi Store.

Paid applications are also available but the store started to slow down to a crawl just as we wanted to try that out. Perhaps a sign of teething problems. Nine selected countries, mostly in Europe but also including Australia and Singapore also each have a dedicated Ovi Store which gives residents there the option to pay for programs through the mobile operators aside from the standard credit card billing.

Filed under: Mobile Phones
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