Five things to know about the Nokia Ovi Store

26 May 2009 19:13 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Nokia's Ovi Store has finally gone live with the claim that it will "open the door to your digital world", but what exactly does it offer the average UK-based Nokia phone owner? We take a quick squint at the Finnish phone giant's new shopping service and bring you five fast facts that we think are worth knowing.

You'll be shopping along with 50 million others
The Ovi Store's doors opened to an estimated 50 million Nokia device owners with compatibility across more than 50 Nokia devices. Anyone can jump on and have a go - as long as they are over 13 - otherwise a parental unit needs to approve. Obviously that 50 million figure won't end up using the service, (although anyone trying to get on the store at launch may feel like they were) but it was a global launch with the mobile client available in English, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish and - supposedly - with support for operator billing in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Singapore, Spain and the United Kingdom.

UK operators don't have operator billing in place
Despite Nokia claiming the UK was one territory that offers operator billing - a means of paying for Ovi Store content via your monthly contract or PAYG account - it seems the major UK operators have been caught on the hop with this one. Pocket-lint put in calls to all five mobile phone carriers in Britain and so far only 3 and T-Mobile have come back with any kind of answer about whether or not they'd be supporting such a service. T-Mobile said they are not offering direct billing - its customers can download content by going direct to Nokia with their credit card details or via premium SMS. 3 says it's tested the Ovi Store on a limited number of devices over the weekend but has not yet discussed operator billing plans with Nokia. Vodafone, Orange and O2 are yet to get back to us.

Don’t worry, there's plenty of free stuff on offer
If you have one of those 50 supported Nokia handsets, then all you need to do to get in on the app action is get yourself registered at Ovi.com, a process that demands a username, password, mobile number and for you to select your Nokia device, and you're away. Free services include a calendar, contacts book, to do lists, Ovi Share for sharing videos and pics, Ovi Maps and then, through the Store - some free content. As you browse the store you get the option to only look for content that's free, so all you folk out there that like to get something for nothing (apart from any data charges from your operator) are well catered for.

It's really relevant to you
One particular feature that Nokia seems to have given some thought too is making the store relevant to you. Yes, you. As you register you have to enter what kind of Nokia device you own, and this, rather than some statistician's ploy to extract info from you, is for good reason as it means that as you browse the Ovi Store, only content that's compatible to your handset will show up. This means that owners of older Nokia devices won't get bored stiff trawling through lists of apps available for handsets with accelerometers - or considering the 5800 and the coming soon N97 - handsets with touchscreens. Nokia is also taking that personalisation a step further with not only a "suggest for me" option, but the use of location-aware tech to realise that a London Underground map ain't going to be much use to someone in Moscow.

However, there isn’t actually that much content available
Exploring the Ovi Store on a PC is quite simple. Nokia has divided the Store into five main areas. The first is "Recommended", which we've covered, the next is "Applications", then "Audio & Visual", followed by "Games" and ending with "Personlisation". Despite Nokia's executive vice president of services telling Forbes the Ovi Store launch would dwarf previous rival launches with some 20,000 items of content, on the UK site, visiting the store via PC on launch day brings up just 174 items in Applications, 132 in Audio & Video, 97 in Games, and 264 in Personalisation. We asked Nokia for a final figure on how many items of content did go live at launch and they would not provide a total. We make the total less than 700 - with less than 200 classed as Applications, not exactly App Store-beating stuff.

Full tags

Phones, Apps, Nokia, Ovi Store, Features