Nokia Ovi Store still behind Apple App Store

Nokia today publicly confirmed a milestone for the Ovi Store that also highlighted its current struggle to gain support from developers. The company now says that it sees 2.3 million downloads every day, up from just two million only a few weeks earlier. About 200,000 new users sign on each day.

Ovi's milestone came just as Nokia was about to launch a redesigned store through the just-shipping N8 and future Symbian^3 devices like the E7. It should now be both more accessible as well as easier to discover certain app types. Development in Nokia's Qt kit has also recently been simplified and can cut down the amount of needed code by as much as 70 percent.

The results are positive for Nokia but still fall significantly behind competitors, particularly Apple. iPhone App Store downloads just this month reached 200 downloads per second, or 17.28 million per day. Nokia's deficit comes in spite of it having much larger market share in smartphones and thus reveals that many Nokia users download few if any apps.

Nokia's steps to improve access and support for developers has followed a backlash from app writers that have complained about the nature of writing Ovi Store apps. The Finnish company's continued dependence on a wide range of different form factors has made it hard to guarantee that one app will be truly successful; it often has to be extended or rewritten for multiple platforms. Until lately, apps were also costly to produce as they not only had longer development times but long review processes and no extras like in-app purchases.

Apple has been criticized until it published its public iOS app rules for a confusing set of guidelines and for sometimes delaying apps for weeks or even months, but it has usually approved apps within two weeks and is considered relatively easy to support.

By Electronista Staff