Reuters: Nokia on Monday began rolling out its much-anticipated online software and content store, Ovi Store, as it aims to follow the success of Apple’s App Store.Nokia said it had started moving Ovi Store to production servers, preparing for the global commercial launch, and the store was opened to users of a few of its phone models in Australia and Singapore on Monday.
Nokia has promised to open the store globally this week.
To cope with slowing phone demand Nokia is building a new business from mobile Internet services — like games or maps — but is scaling back separate investment plans due to the slowdown, and focusing on merging the delivery of services.
Nokia, which made its first ever quarterly pretax loss in January-March, is cutting annual costs at its key handset unit alone by more than 700 million euros ($979.7 million) to counter plunging demand.
The Apple App Store has proved extremely popular, with one billion applications downloaded in less than a year, and operators and technology firms including Vodafone Nokia, and Microsoft now want a piece of the pie.
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