A look at Nokia's Ovi mobile app store

Mobile app store launches in May; here's an inside look at what it is

Apple's iPhone App store has been a launchpad for the many entrepreneurs striking it out on their own to create games or services for the more than 10 million iPhone users. It's also been a big success for Apple, having 25,000 available applications and already accumulating 800 million downloads since launching it last year.

It's not surprising, therefore that Apple has inspired the launch of several other mobile stores recently.  Blackberry answered with its Blackberry App World, Google has its Android Market, and now Nokia is launching the Ovi Store.  

The Ovi Store will launch in May of this year.

Nokia's Ovi Store is 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. 

Over at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week, I was able to catch up with some of Nokia's representatives for Ovi. In this hand-filmed video, you can take a look at the upcoming Ovi store, some of the phones that will be Ovi compatible, a working Facebook application on a new Nokia phone, and a little bit about the 70/30 revenue share model Nokia is offering for application developers. 

According to the friendly guys at Nokia, there are already thousands of registered developers signed up and creating Apps to be sold in the Ovi Store.  

Whether Nokia can be as successful as Apple will be interesting to watch.

In one month, Apple sold an average of $1 million in applications a day since the App Store launched in mid-July 2008. All told, 60 million programs were downloaded in one month since the store debuted. At the time, Apple said it believed the App Store will bring in $360 million in annual revenue. Apple takes 30% of the sales its developers make on apps.