Nokia’s Ovi Store Hits 3 Million Daily Downloads

Nokia announced its Ovi Store, their version of the App Store, has reached three million daily downloads and 400,000 new developers in the past year.

The Espoo, Finland-based company said the growth of its store comes from a recent update which gives users of Nokia's new Symbian smartphone a friendlier look. The company said the global demand for many of the Ovi Store's apps have allowed 92 of its developers to reach one million downloads each.

Ovi Store is on a strong trajectory fueled by new apps and games from a growing number of partners and more than 250,000 new consumers signing up for Ovi every day. The number of daily downloads has increased from about 2 million to 3 million since September. We anticipate our progress will continue as we have just begun shipping our new Symbian smartphones, said Tero Ojanperae, Executive Vice President, Services, Nokia, in a statement.

Nokia said its Qt Software Development Toolkit has allowed developers to create apps at faster speeds while bringing them to the company's latest phones. The company also recently announced a Qt framework to create apps for Symbian-based devices that will be powered by the soon-to-debut MeeGo operating system. The company hopes this will allow for developers to make a smooth transition to the MeeGo operating system.

With Nokia's stronger focus on the Qt platform and improved developer ecosystem, Nokia should continue to see its developer numbers increase as developers see profit from new revenue shares, operator billings and the ever-growing user base around the world, said Scott Ellison, Vice President of Mobile and Consumer Connected Platforms at IDC, in a statement.

Despite the success, the Ovi Store still has a long way to go before it can catch up with Apple's App Store. While Apple has not recently confirmed the number of downloads per day, the last official report in January had said the number was over 10 million daily.