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Nokia's Ovi Store now doing 2m downloads a day

Stuart Dredge
Nokia's Ovi Store now doing 2m downloads a day

Adds in-app payments with carrier billing, and shifts to 60:40 rev-share for developers.

Nokia's Ovi Store is now generating two million downloads every day, as the company prepares to shift to a 60:40 revenue share for developers that will see Nokia absorbing the operator's cut.

The two million figure was revealed by VP of Product, Media George Linardos, in a speech at Nokia's Developer Summit this afternoon.

It's up from the 1.7 million daily downloads previously being quoted by Nokia.

85% of the store's daily traffic is "return traffic", said Linardos, while 90% of Ovi Store users are accessing a localised version of the store.

"Application stores are not rocket science at all," said Linardos.

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"It's very simple. You give consumers what they want. You make it as easy as possible for consumers to find the content they want, to download it and to purchase it."

Linardos drew direct comparisons with Apple's App Store during his talk too, promising developers they will be able to make money on Ovi Store.

"I don't mean 'win the lottery' - throw an application in the tank, game the system and pray you make enough to buy the kids' Christmas presents," said Linardos.

Nokia has launched a new version of Ovi Store for the N8 - "gone is the carousel, gone is the lag-time - gone are the frustrating things for consumers. The store has gotten out of the way of itself".

Linardos claimed that the revamped Ovi Store is faster in 80% of use cases - Nokia set up dozens of possible app store tasks, and tested them.

He also said that the new version on Symbian devices is faster than rivals' app stores in 35% of use cases. "Yes, by our competition I mean those guys," said Linardos. "Both of 'em."

He also stressed that Nokia has also revamped Ovi Store for Series 40 devices, and that it's seeing huge usage from users of feature phones.

"I get asked a lot 'How many apps do you have?'" said Linardos. "I actually don't care. What matters is not that I have a bucket of applications, but that we have the right application for the right person at the right time."

He also said Nokia sees Ovi Store as "a media play... you would never go to a radio station and say 'how many records do you have in your vault?' What matters is 'do the things you put on the air engage your audiences at the right time?'."

Nokia is making great play of its ability to help locally developed apps be successful in Ovi Store around the world.

But Linardos kept returning to Apple, criticising stores where "3% of developers make 50% of the revenue".

"We can boost anything to the top of the deck," he continued, flagging up Nokia's keenness to promote local apps in each country.

"Yes, it's been difficult to publish in Ovi Store in the past," he said.

"This is a very young business. When I look at application stores, I don't see a sprint out of the gate where somebody's going to win and somebody's going to lose... We've seen the rise of a new kind of media platform, and this is going to play out for years and years to come."

As announced earlier, Nokia is no longer charging developers to sign their applications for Ovi Store, which Linardos suggested will open it up for smaller developers.

Developers and publishers are also being given more control over the metadata around their apps on Nokia's store.

Nokia also recently bought analytics firm Motally, which Linardos said will be a major part of Nokia's Ovi platform going forward.

He also talked developer finances. Nokia earlier announced that in-app purchases are coming to Ovi Store, which will also support try-and-buy and subscription models.

"We're in closed beta, it goes wider in December, and it goes commercial in Q1," said Linardos.

Nokia plans to integrate its in-app purchases with its carrier billing deals, so users will pay for items and content on their phone bills.

"An in-application purchase with our competitors means credit-card purchases," said Linardos. "We have over 90 operators, and we'll be integrating in-app billing and making it available with those operators. This is unprecedented."

In most markets right now, two thirds of Ovi Store purchases use operator billing, revealed Linardos.

"When we turn a new market on and we go from credit-card to operator, we see a 13x increase in transactions by enabling operator billing," he said.

Linardos admitted that developers haven't always been happy with the Ovi Store revenue share, since it's only 70:30 after operators have taken their share.

"We're announcing a worldwide fixed operator revenue share today," said Linardos. "In operator billing circumstances, including in-app billing, it's a fixed rate revenue share of 60% to the developer and 40% to Nokia."

This starts on 1 October, and Linardos admitted that the rev-share means that Nokia is subsidising this.

"Developers will make on average 40% more through operator billing cases as a result of this," he said.

Linardos finished off with some stats on successful developers on Ovi Store, starting with Offscreen Technologies.

Its apps have generated more than 43 million downloads from Ovi Store, and it's currently doing three million a month.

Meanwhile, music app TuneWiki was downloaded in 133 countries in its first three days on Ovi Store. "It took Phineas Fogg 80 days to circle the world in a balloon," noted Linardos.

"We've got the juggernaut rolling now. It's taken a while, but that's because it's big and complex."

Linardos took a final pot-shot at Apple and Google, suggesting that their app stores are mainly about making those companies rich through - respectively - handset sales and the search business.

Tags: ovi store , Nokia