Who says the iPhone App Store’s the only place to make mobile app money? Google‘s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android Market may have seen more than 1 billion downloads and host 160,000 apps, Apple Inc.‘s (NASDAQ: AAPL) seemingly ubiquitous digital bazaar may see 8.5 million downloads every day, and Microsoft‘s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows Phone 7 might be the exciting new kid on the block, but they can’t a good mobile storefront down. Nokia‘s (NYSE: NOK) Symbian^3 isn’t the toast of the smartphone operating market, but at least the phone manufacturers Ovi Store is staying healthy.
As of August 2010, it was estimated that Nokia’s digital storefront was seeing 1.8 million downloads per day, a far enough cry from traffic on competing services that software developers were reportedly shy of working on the Symbian platform. In October, Nokia reported that the company’s initiatives to spur Ovi development were having a positive effect, with daily downloads reaching 2.3 million each day. Nokia announced a new milestone this morning: the Nokia Ovi store has seen 3 million daily media and app downloads.
The Finnish mobile manufacturer shared more promising statistics for the service as well. The Ovi Store now hosts in excess of 165 million users across 190 countries and is growing at a rate of 250,000 users per day with the average user downloading 2.6 apps from the storefront. Since the Ovi Store launched as part of Nokia’s broader Ovi service last year, 92 developers have seen more than 1 million downloads for their apps, and more than 400,000 developers have signed up to develop for the store. Nokia partnered with AT&T (NYSE: T) at the end of last summer to launch the Calling All Innovators contest, offering Ovi app developers in a number of different categories cash prizes from a $4 million fund raised by the manufacturer and telecom companies, an initiative that is helping spur the store’s growth. The Ovi Store is also getting a strong boost from popular mobile game developers. Independent studio Rovio’s Angry Bird, a fast hit on the iPhone, has found a substantial audience on the Ovi Store while major publishers like Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) are seeing healthy downloads for new games like Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.
Nokia is in a stronger position than Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) when it comes to rapidly growing their mobile app storefront. While mobile apps are popular talking point in business around the world at the moment, competing storefronts are shackled to the rapidly growing, though still limited internationally, smartphone market. Nokia’s Ovi Store is available on 20 different handsets that include both connected smartphones and cellular feature phones. Nokia still controls the 32.4% majority of the world mobile phone market thanks to the continued popularity of its low-cost feature phones. Consumer interest in apps is likely to grow faster than the smartphone market in China, India, and Eastern Europe, which should give Nokia a chance to continue building the Ovi Store while they formulate an effective strategy to compete in the smartphone market against Apple and Google-backed manufacturers like Motorola (NYSE: MOT). This does not, however, mean it’s time to buy Nokia again. Share price has grown +20% since the company’s disastrous first quarter, trading around $10 today, but investors should hold off until the stock shows more steady growth. Provided Nokia can build its phone business as well as its app business, growth should be coming in 2011.
As of this writing, Anthony Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
