Nokia Ovi store hits 3 million. But….

Nokia Ovi Store, which is a recent entrant to mobile app market, has reached 3 million downloads per day. This comes after it has reached 2 million downloads per day only in August. Not bad for a store which was launched only a year ago. 3 million downloads per day are achieved with just 18,000 content titles. This could only be possible because of Nokia’s more than a billion handsets across the globe. Ovi Store has some staggering statistics to signify its growth. Here we go:

1. 165 million Ovi users across 190 countries
2. 250,000 new users added everyday
3. 1.5 million downloads for its software development kit Nokia QT SDK.
4. 100 developers has reached 1 million+ downloads

Top 3 apps on Ovi Store :

1. Q Torch : A utility torch and SOS app from CellApp Technology of India leads the charts for top free apps and overall apps.
2. Angry Birds is the top paid app on Ovi store.
3. Need for Speed Shift HD from Electronic Arts occupies the third place in the overall app downloads.

Here’s the Infographic from Nokia Forum for the Top Symiban Apps in each region :

This is all good news. Except that not all of Ovi store is hunky dory. Nokia’s smartphone  platforms and the app store suffer from huge fragmentation. Mobile developers, and 84% of them, feel Apple store is much better. 40% of the Nokia Ovi developers think that Android store is better. Three biggest reasons cited for high disapproval for Nokia Ovi Store are – lack of good search for apps, lack of decent promotion and slow approval process. Though slow approval process is not a Nokia-only problem.

Ovi Store suffers from yet another problem and this is not from developers but from users. Apple at all times has only two versions of OS to deal with, current version and the new version. This makes the job of developers so darn easy. Android which has multiple version ranging from 1.5 to 2.2 has a different but a manageable problem. Ovi store has a totally different problem. It doesn’t yet have a standard OS for its mobile phones. Yes it has Symbian and Nokia N8 runs Symbian^3 but the future of the OS still hangs. It is actively support the Meego project and hopes get it on some of its future phones. This bleak future makes it highly difficult for user to choose a Nokia smartphone. Besides excellent hardware, smartphone users look for application support.

Even with the existing phones and the applications available there are whole lot of usability problems starting from finding an app to upgrading the app to the latest version. Keir Thomas of PC World points these out :

Ovi Store’s problems are numerous. The biggest fault is that it acts like an app manager but isn’t one. It has no idea of the software already installed on my phone, for example, so it often prompts me to install something I’ve already got. It has no comprehension of software version numbers either, so can’t be used for updating existing software. Occasionally it even forgets which applications it’s installed itself, leaving me attempting to install the same application twice. Nokia phones contain a simple Application Manager tool to deal with software removal, but it’s not unreasonable to expect that functionality to be integrated with Ovi Store.

iPhone users will not have to worry about if the app will run on their phone or not. Android users have little worry. Nokia users have to get lucky to get an app running.