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Nokia: Apple’s App Store ‘is a must have’ (but so are we)

I caught this post by Stuart Dredge over on Mobile Entertainment. He sat in on panel at this week’s MIPCOM event in Cannes. Stuart points out that Cedric Thomas, the chap who heads up Nokia’s Ovi services in France, delivered a delightfully direct assessment of his (and Nokia’s) suggested developer App Store strategy.

Cedric’s key statement:

– Apple is a must have in US and EU
– Nokia is key for Asian market (including China) and Europe
– Android is leading the US market and growing in EU
– BlackBerry strong in US

Stuart comments that he found Cedric’s honesty refreshing and that is represented, ‘a clear sign that Nokia has largely ditched its traditional bullishness, in favour of a more realistic appraisal of its position in the apps market.’

Agreed.

I’d like to see more of this.

The disarmingly honest approach should help the Nokia-Is-Shit crowd (i.e. most of the marketplace) recognise that whilst they’ve lost they way in the West, they are steaming ahead in what we traditionally refer to as the developing countries.

The Ovi Store is now running at an average of 2.5 million downloads per day — which, if extrapolated across 365 days, equates to just under a billion downloads. That number is only going to get larger and larger.

And what’s the make-up of those downloads?

75% of those downloads are apps and games, with games the most popular category for paid downloads, and apps the most popular for free downloads.

Keep a watch on Nokia.

6 COMMENTS

  1. Interesting. I stood in Nokia HQ in Finland last week and asked some very direct questions to couple of top guys there. Not once did they admit that Nokia had slipped in the US market, nor did he say the N8’s road to market was a rocky one, despite launch delays and conflicting reports from execs within the company.

    Every person with a Nokia affiliation that I spoke to after that ever recognised the other players in the market, instead ramming the same piece of crap down my throat: “We are activating 250,000 phones a day and are the biggest manufacturer in the world”.

    Yes, I know that.

    It’s great some employees are getting the idea, the people I spoke to might have missed the memo.

  2. Best of luck to all those developers who have no time for Nokia/Symbian and focus their efforts on iPhone/Android. Personally I and increasing amounts of others would like a share of that 750 million app downloads a year and very little competition currently, thank you very much!

    Other notable points I hear on the grapevine:

    A leading iPhone dev company mentioned at the Nokia dev thing at CTIA the other day that it took them a grand total of 2 weeks to port their iPhone game to Symbian and launch on Ovi.

    I keep hearing from multi-platform developers that their apps on Ovi are bringing in as much income as their iPhone versions, with Android versions making barely anything.

    I keep hearing that Ovi dev tools, SDK, QT quick etc now offer the best mobile dev experience out of any of the leading platforms.

    Be interested to hear if these are reflected more widely.

  3. Also notable is the fact Nokia’s now the cheapest app store to become a publisher for.

    “For a Euro you [i.e. anyone] can publish as many apps as you like to the Ovi Store, for as long as you like.”

    http://thehandheldblog.com/2010/10/09/you-can-now-publish-to-the-ovi-store-for-just-a-euro-plus-the-latest-ovi-store-figures/

    Yes, the proof is in the pudding as they say, but one has to commend Nokia for making Ovi one of the most, if not the most, attractive app store to target (taking into consideration Android store’s failings and the competition for most developers on iPhone).

  4. Ovi? What’s Ovi? A pile of bullshit, at most. I have a so called nokia “business phone” and very most of the apps on this phone originate from independent sources because there is nothing in ovi store. And I don’t mean nothing useful, just nothing.

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