Nokia App Store Next Week

Nokia will chase after Apple and other rivals with a mobile app portal of its own, a pair of sources claim. The reported contacts explain to Reuters that the software store will be announced at Nokia's press conference for Mobile World Congress on Monday morning. When it will go live and how its pricing strategy will work are unknown, though the shop is likely to be limited to Symbian S60 devices like the 5800 XpressMusic and N97, which have a more complex operating system capable of supporting advanced mobile apps.

Samsung has already quietly launched its own app store though the shop is primarily web-based and includes Windows Mobile apps in addition to Symbian code.

Nokia would be the latest in a wave of phone OS developers that are adopting their own mobile stores. Microsoft is expected to launch a Windows Mobile Marketplace feature, codenamed Skymarket, when it unveils Windows Mobile 6.5 next week. Research in Motion has already announced and is developing a BlackBerry Application Center, while Palm will have a webOS app store ready by the time the Pre smartphone arrives in the first half of the year.

The efforts are commonly seen as reactions to Apple's App Store for the iPhone, which has swelled to over 20,000 apps in unofficial metrics and is now considered one of the selling points of the device. Software stores have existed for smartphone platforms in the past but have usually been run by third parties like Handango and often either require a separate download just to access the store or have royalty terms less favorable to developers. Apple's system gives 70 percent of revenue to the developer regardless of the number of copies sold and thus lets more successful developers maintain the same level of profit.

By Electronista Staff

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iPhone, industry, Microsoft, Symbian, Nokia, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Palm, Research in Motion, Handango, App Store, mobile phones, Apple, webOS