Disappointing, but inflated expectations mainly to blame.
Nokia didn't reveal download stats for its Ovi Store at this week's Nokia World conference, but it did cough up some numbers to US journalists in a phone conference.
Specifically, Nokia's EVP of Devices Kai Oistamo said that Ovi Store users have downloaded 10 million apps and pieces of content in its first three months. MocoNews does the sums based on Nokia's separate claim of an average of six downloads per user, to come up with 1.67 million active Ovi Store users.
The comparison that everyone will be making is with Apple's App Store, which did 100 million downloads in its first two months last year. Set against that, and given the much larger install base of Nokia handsets, Ovi Store's 10 million milestone is undeniably a disappointment.
Why? Nokia itself must take some of the blame, with its pre-launch claims that Ovi Store would have an "addressable base" of 50 million handsets at launch. It seems only 3.4% of those phones are currently being used to download from the store, if you use that 1.67 million active users figure.
However, what this doesn't show is that Ovi Store itself is a flop: but rather the limitations of getting people to download the client themselves. Nokia saw the same problem in the early days of its second-generation N-Gage service.
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What will drive Ovi Store usage will be lots of handsets shipping with the client preloaded, along with measures to ensure handset buyers find it and try it out. New pricing models such as try-and-buy will also help drive more downloads from the store.
The same MocoNews piece reports Oistamo as saying Ovi Store downloads were up 50% from July to August, showing the impact of more N97s - with the client preloaded - getting into customers' hands.
