Nokia opens door on underwhelming app store experience

Nokia, the world’s biggest handset vendor, joined the fray on Tuesday morning by opening the doors to its own app store, which is an extension of the firm’s Ovi services platform.

The Ovi Store will be accessible to some 50 Nokia handset models, and will feature as a pre-installed service on the forthcoming flagship product, the N97. Nokia reckons that the targetable market of Nokia owners seeking out applications, games, videos, podcasts, productivity tools, and location based services will be in the region of 50 million at launch.

That’s if those users can get onto the site, that is. A flurry of complaints that appeared across the web immediately following the launch suggested that the store was having some teething problems. The majority of these claimed that the site was slow and clunky and appeared to be lacking in content. Attempts by Telecoms.com to access the site online have been abortive so far.

What we have seen seems to be pretty standard fare, although it definitely lacks the polish of the Apple App Store. US carrier AT&T, which was the first in the world to launch the iPhone, confirmed today that it would be making the Ovi Store accessible to its customers later this year. It should be noted, however, that Nokia has very weak market share in the US, which is likely to affect the app store’s uptake in that market.