We already know that Nokia is planning to launch an Ovi Store this year. It was originally scheduled to roll out this month, though we have yet to see or hear about it in the North American region, however it’s now live in Australia, Singapore, Ireland and Spain.
The official announcement about its availability hasn’t been made, but it is already accessible on Nokia Mobile phones such as the Nokia E75 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. This is, according to AllAboutSymbian, just a soft launch, and we can expect more countires to gain access to Nokia’s app store shortly. The upcoming Nokia N97 should come with native support for the Ovi Store and here’s what it should look like on the phone.
You can try downloading the Ovi Store on your S60 Nokia phone if you like. Just follow these simple steps:
1. Open Download, choose Options > Refresh content
2. Go to Nokia Extra’s Category, an Ovi Store entry should be there
3. Download and install the Ovi Store app
4. After it’s installed, Ovi Store should be found under the Installations / My Extras (or similar) folder
Based on the provided images, it looks like apps won’t come cheap. There are still some free apps to download, but the cheapest retail app is priced at 3 Euros which is a far cry from the $0.99 average price of the iPhone apps in the App Store.
Anyway, things aren’t official yet so we’re hoping the pricing isn’t as well. With this soft launch, the grand announcement of Nokia’s Ovi Store shouldn’t be far behind. By then, we’ll probably get more details regarding the official pricing and availability of their app store.
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UPDATE: Nokia Ovi Store is now live across the globe. Through the website, you can select which apps and content you want and send an appropriate link to your mobile phone. I can’t seem to find any paid content at the moment so we’re still intrigued at how much paid apps would actually cost. The good thing working for the Ovi Store is that it supports a variety of Nokia phones and not just the latest ones. Click here to register and find out for yourself the various goodies Nokia has over at their new Ovi Store.
On a similar note, AT&T will be partnering with Nokia to offer up the app store in the US so its highly possible that Rogers will do the same in Canada. The full press release can be found here.
