Nokia looking to integrate Ovi Store with Windows Phone Marketplace

VP of location keen to stress the ways Nokia and Microsoft can work together going forward.

The question of whether Ovi Store will have a presence on Nokia-made Windows Phone 7 smartphones was left unanswered during Mobile World Congress last week. Now a blog post by Nokia's VP of location Tuula Rytilä-Uotila provides a little more information.

"Look at our momentum from Ovi Store. We took it to 190 countries and more than 30 languages and tripled consumer transactions when we implemented operator billing," she writes.

"Now we could integrate that experience with Windows Marketplace, improving the consumer experience and leveraging our collective knowledge to make it easier for developers to share and upload content and track."

The key word being 'could', of course. It's a clear sign that Nokia still sees a role for Ovi Store on its Windows Phone 7 handsets, although whether it will be branded as such remains unclear.

She also highlights some other opportunities for the two companies. " Our expertise and success with Ovi Maps can help us realize new opportunities beyond navigation and localized content. We can make online advertising mobile, local and contextual through the search offered from Bing, and the ad-services available from Microsoft AdCenter, combined with our own location-based advertising assets."