Nokia has officially opened the doors to the Ovi Store application site – but its answer to Apple’s app store immediately ran into problems.
High traffic "spikes" – which would surely have been expected, right? – meant users experienced slow downloading and page upload times.
Effort were immediately made to rectify this by adding additional servers, according to Eric John, head up product marketing for the Ovi Store.
But it meant Nokia didn’t get the smooth launch it would have hoped for.
The Ovi Store is the fourth major mobile app software store to open, and the third since Apple launched iTunes in July 2008, following the Android Market and BlackBerry App World.
Some analysts suggest the market can only sustain five such ventures.
Nokia said the applications and services storefront will target an estimated 50 million Nokia device owners, across more than 50 Nokia devices, including the forthcoming flagship phone the Nokia N97.
Users will have the ability to download mobile applications – starting with an initial offerering of over 20,000 – including games, videos and podcasts.
The mobile client is available in English, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish and supports operator billing in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Singapore, Spain and the United Kingdom.
Globally, credit card billing is available through the mobile application and the mobile website.
AT&T plans to make Ovi Store available to its customers in the United States later this year. Additional countries, languages, devices and features will be added throughout the year.
We’d be interested in hearing your experience with Ovi – good or bad?
Comments