Nokia’s very own centralized application marketplace, dubbed Ovi Store, today officially made its way to the public arena as we expected. It will have to stand up and fight against other notable mobile content stores such as Apple’s App Store, Windows Mobile Marketplace and BlackBerry’s Application Center. Nokia is rolling out the app and content store globally (with credit card support), but currently reserves operator billing for customers in Australia, Singapore, Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia, Ireland and the UK. Additional countries and languages will be added throughout the year, with AT&T planning to make Ovi Store available to its customers in the U.S. later this year.
Nokia claims more than 50 of its mobile devices are compatible with the service as of today, with more slated to roll out over time, and estimates that around 50 million people with Nokia devices will be able to license content and download applications from the Ovi Store right now. The news is now completely out there and people are testing the service like crazy, which means it can be a little slow or downright unresponsive at times.
Update: actually, the launch is a complete fail.
We’ve browsed the online store extensively and hand-picked 10 applications we think you should download and install first. Note that the available content you can download depends on which device you’re using, we’ve selected the option ‘any phone’ to increase the chances of these being available for you as well:
* Qik (Photo & video, free) – Ovi Store listing: a powerful way to share live video from your mobile phone with friends everywhere you go. MobileCrunch knew it was going to be one of the featured apps in the store back in March.
* FlyScreen (News & Info, free)- Ovi Store listing: an application that lets you add your favorite web services (in widget form) to your phone’s sleep screen, enabling zero-click access to the content you use most.
* Photobucket (Photo & video) – Ovi Store listing: lets you log in to your Photobucket account, upload photos from your phone to your album and search its public repository of photos.
* Flight Info (News & Info, free) – Ovi Store listing: key in any airline code and flight number and track terminal, departing and arrival information.
* Assassin’s Creed (Games) – Ovi Store listing: end the Third Crusade from your mobile phone. Update: seems to have disappeared from the store somehow. Alternative: Wolverine (€5).
* Twittix (Social Networks, €1) – Ovi Store listing: Yup, it’s a mobile client for Twitter.
* MobiSystems OfficeSuite 5 (Business, €20) – Ovi Store listing: OfficeSuite is a complete mobile office solution, allowing you to create, view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files away from your office. Support MS Office 2007 files.
* RISK (Games, €5) – Ovi Store listing: Enjoy the classic board game playing against up to five cunning computer opponents, each with distinctive tactics and unique levels of aggression.
* AP News (News & Info, free) – Ovi Store listing: Yes, we know, it’s AP, but this app does give you a good overview of breaking news and photo galleries to boot.
* World Traveler (Utilities) – Ovi Store listing: allows travelers to plan and manage journey activities and provides instant access to relevant information and services. Update: seems to have disappeared from the store somehow. Alternative: WorldMate 2009 (free).