Nokia Ovi Store, open for business

Ovi store launches for 50 million Nokia devices, but experiences several technical difficulties

Today, Nokia has finally launched its own App store, the Ovi Store.  The Ovi store is available across 50 Nokia devices at which Nokia estimates could reach about 50 million users.  

Unfortunately, shortly after the 2 am ET launch, bloggers and users across the Web reported ‘utter disaster,’ when trying to get Ovi up and running on their phones.  TechCrunch reported apps were disappearing and reappearing, ZDNet reported registration and server timeout issues.  

In response, Nokia said it had been experiencing extraordinarily high spikes of traffic and addressed the issue by adding servers, which resulted in more performance problems.  Nokia said, “We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused Ovi Store users and encourage you to continue giving us feedback as we develop the service further.”

Besides being a store for Nokia users, it's also another opportunity for mobile application developers to create the next big hit game or service. The difference here is the fact that Nokia's Ovi platform allows developers to use common Web programming languages like Java, HTML and Flash, to develop applications.  Anybody with a background in Web site development can give a shot at making an app for Ovi enabled devices.  I met with Nokia representatives at the Web 2.0 Expo last month, and they told me there were already thousands of registered developers signed up and creating Apps to be sold in the Ovi Store.  They will be splitting revenue with Nokia at a 70/30 rev-share model.

The Ovi store is not available in the US at the moment, but AT&T said it, “looks forward to introducing Ovi Store for our customers later this year."