Congratulations to candyman and lastrider! These Symbian-Guru readers guessed that Nokia would open its new Ovi Store content marketplace on May 25th, and we’re pumped to tell you that it’s now open for business, at least in Australia! The Ovi Store, which was announced only a few months ago at the 2009 Mobile World Congress, is an on-device mobile application marketplace for applications, themes, ringtones, widgets, and other content for Nokia cell phones. According to All About Symbian, it’s now live in Australia on some handsets. UPDATE: looks like Ireland and Singapore are also now live – more countries should be live throughout the day.
The content is available for both S40-powered featurephones and S60-powered smartphones, though obviously we at Symbian-Guru.com are most excited about the S60 application availabilities. The store will eventually be seen as an icon preloaded onto newer phones, beginning with the Nokia N97, but is also available as a mobile web portal for phones that are already in the hands of, well, you guys. You can also re-read our Q&A with the Ovi Store team here.
You can see if it’s available for you by opening the Download! application, refreshing the content, then checking the ‘Nokia Extras’ folder. On some newer Symbian-powered smartphones, the store will apparently be available as an installable widget, though other phones are likely to be able to use a web interface.
We’ll have more coverage of the cool applications available in the Ovi Store soon. However, we also want to remind you that the Symbian-Guru Software Store is alive and well, available here. We’re constantly adding new content to our store, thanks to the hard work of the MobiHand team and Symbian developers around the world. When you purchase applications through our store, it helps us keep this site going.
