Some teething problems for Nokia's new online store

NOKIA, THE world’s largest mobile phone maker, yesterday launched an online store selling software and content that runs on its handsets.

With the launch of Ovi Store, the Finnish firm is hoping to replicate the success of Apple’s App Store for the iPhone which has delivered over one billion downloads, although many of these are free with no revenue going to Apple or their developers.

However, customers had problems accessing the Ovi Store on its first day. In a blog post, Eric John, Nokia’s head of marketing for the project, said that shortly after launching “we began experiencing extraordinarily high spikes of traffic that resulted in some performance issues for users accessing” the service.

Nokia began adding additional computers to support Ovi Store which Mr John said “resulted in intermittent performance improvements”. Nokia said users accessing the store through their mobile handsets did not have any issues. Applications from the store will run on 50 different models of Nokia phones which means it has 50 million potential customers. A range of tools and content are available including games, videos, podcasts, productivity tools, web and location-based services.

Ireland is one of seven countries where users can have the cost of the software added to their mobile bill. Nokia locally said all Irish operators are supporting this facility. The service can be used in other countries by registering a credit card.