Ovi Store continues to grow – now hitting 2.3 million downloads per day (and that's without S^3 handsets yet)

Ovi Store downloads per day has grown to 2.3million. That’s 840 million annual downloads should Ovi Store stay at this level (ignoring the likelihood growths as 200,000 users sign up to Ovi every day – and more so with the launch of the Symbian^3 handsets).

That’s quite a growth from the often mentioned 1.7 million figure (though a few weeks back was apparently when Ovi Store hit 2 M). 70 developers have had over 1 million downloads. That’s 2.3 million downloads per day WITHOUT the launch of Symbian^3 handsets, without the N8 (which has received record preorder numbers – not to mention C6-01 which we all know will fly out of the shelves when released)

Ovi Store, unlike other stores, has a much wider, global reach. Developers, like Pixelpipe can reach over 190 countries through Ovi Store.

Considering that the real Push with Symbian^3, Qt and MeeGo are still in infancy, just imagine the growth of Ovi Store when the N8’s, C6-01, C7, E7, and eventually N9 hit the shelves (the N8 just shipping and getting to preorder consumers from 30th Sept).

Ovi Store was launched just last year, May 2009. Seemed oddly longer than that, no? (App Store by comparison, July 2008)

Remember a post a while back based on respected analyst, Tomi Ahonen:

Ovi Store will tower over Apple’s App Store and Android Market in a few years

Tomi comment 1 Ovi – first, as the various platforms sort their App stores out, they fix the bugs and kinks, get reasonably similar..

Tomi comment 2 Ovi – then as Nokia sells 450M phones/year & world replace phones every 17 months, has time to roll out Ovi to its clients

Tomi comment 3 Ovi – as developers see Ovi is world’s furthest-reaching app platform (outside of USA obviously) they rush to port apps to it

Tomi comment 4 Ovi – in a few years Ovi will tower over all other App stores incl iPhone & Android simply due to Nokia’s scale. Inevitable

Tomi comment 5 Ovi – look at Nokia’s ethos, they learned that ‘internet lesson’ very well, to launch often and release updates often..

Tomi comment 6 Ovi – Nokia know for market success, ‘best’ is the enemy of ‘good enough’

Could Tomi’s prediction still come true? The poll results were sceptical. Ovi Store still has a long way to go, not just in sheer numbers of app content (we all know bigger is obviously better all the time -_- regardless of how many shitty duplicates of useless apps there are) but also of quality content

Hopefully with Qt, Nokia can attract more developers who will see the cross platform advantage of creating one app to be distributed easily across several Qt compatible platforms.

Why shouldn’t developers seek a bigger audience and get more revenue? Nokia (due to their need of smaller, individual devs) are highly supportive of people developing for their platform. There’s also backing from Intel and a host of industry leaders through the MeeGo partnership (which through Qt will mean apps will be available for Symbian devices too).

Another factor to consider is the whole Ovi Store experience – which may deserve a separate post – (side note, new Ovi Store in Nokia tests, 80% of users performed same task quicker). Operator billing instead of paypal/creditcard/google checkout is a major plus that Nokia’s betting on.

“So far, Nokia has made the most noise about operator billing–basically, the ability to charge an app to a phone bill. Most app stores rely on more cumbersome processes, such as payments through third-party services like PayPal or Google Checkout. Nokia says people buy far more apps–13 times more, on average–when they are allowed to charge expenses to their bills. Nokia has signed 91 carriers around the world, including AT&T and T-Mobile in the U.S., to the program and is adding a new operator every seven to 10 days.”

– Forbes

AT&T and T-Mob for US penetration? No need to have paypal, or a credit card. Just charge to your bill/phone credit. (Then there’s that 10 Mill USD developer competition thing with Nokia and AT&T)

The split is 60/40, and the costly access to operator billing system is footed by Nokia from their 40% share. Though Nokia may lose money this way, attracting developers is a more important long term goal. “We look at it as an investment…We realize we need to subsidize the market right now” George Linardos, Nokia’s Vice President of Media.

Other Ovi Store growth points:

• in app billing
• Free java app signing – for those hundreds of millions of feature phones
• Free symbian app signing
• new touch and type API which blurs smartphones/feature phones

Via UnwiredView / ForumNokia / Reuters / Forbes

Tags: Nokia, Ovi Store

Category: Nokia, OVI