Nokia's Ovi Store now available on AT&T, still not competitive
By Christopher Grant 
posted January 6th 2010 5:50PM
posted January 6th 2010 5:50PM
As revealed by Ralph de la Vega at AT&T's CES Developer Summit this morning (liveblog here) and singled out by CNET, Nokia's flailing and heretofore not-available-on-AT&T Ovi Store is finally available on Ma Bell, complete with direct billing. As of today, Nokia users can snag the usual assortment of apps, games, and ringtones and have the purchases billed directly to their mobile carrier. CNET reports that Nokia devices like "E71x, the Surge, the Mural, the 6650, the 6555, and the 6350" are working today and that "more [Nokia] devices soon coming to AT&T's network will be able to access the Ovi Store." Next step: Make it an experience worth visiting!
Well hello Christopher Grant, welcome to engadget! (who got fired?)
Like it!!
I love Nokia store :-)
Ovi Store ain't that bad homie.
@zephxiii
It's ok in theory, but in practice 99% of the Symbian apps are still outside of the OVI Store.
@Endadget and free!
@zephxiii I noticed this the other day when I was trying to get a barcode reader app installed. Now it forces you to install the Ovi Store, so it was necessary to install for me to get the app.
And, it's not bad at all. The number of apps is low and too many are pay apps. But there is some progress. nokia should have had this available on ATT much earlier.
@Endadget
I have been using Symbian phones for almost 5 years now and i don't think i could get used to using the store instead of downloading apps from the internet :D
Great, so how do I get to it from my AT&T 6650? store.ovi.com says my device isn't supported...
is this really going to work out for Nokia?
@HighestRanked
absolutely not. With AT&T soon selling the iPhone, multiple Android handsets, multiple WebOS handsets, multiple Blackberrys, and WinMo devices, Nokia doesn't stand any sort of chance whatsoever.
@crawdad689
Since when was ATT the only carrier that existed in the world? You do realize, outside of the US, Nokia is dominant in basically every phone market.
Right now, Symbian is much like WinMo in that an App store of some sort doesn't mean much. The Ovi services when combined together could become rather powerfull. Nokia has the resources, question is will they develop Ovi in a manner similar to google's own services.
OVI Store kinda sucks.
very little nice app, a lot of garbage.
@eka "very little nice app, a lot of garbage"
Sounds kinda like.. Apple's App Store?
well it couldn't POSSIBLY be any worse than the bad joke that is Windows Marketplace
Nice touch, for sure. Nokia does not need to compete as long as the presence is preserved. What goes up must come down (is it not right, iCrowd?), and SHE will be waiting %)
Well, it's nice that now, when Ovi borks up a download and charges you anyway, you can appeal to ATT rather than calling and getting the finger from Nokia directly...
When you download an app from OVI it gets stored in a tab in the store application. It has a history of all your downloads, paid and free and it should be there even in a bad download.
The thing is, OVI store really isn't that bad. At all. It's simple, clean, neat and gets the job done in a quick manner and works anywhere and does not require you to synch.
I do not see OVI store being big and I doubt their intention is to have it grow big, unless it does so naturally. Ovi store is only 1 of the many services that is offered along with free email, free online storage/OTA synch, free files, free PC/Mobile synch, free calendar etc etc. Think MobileMe, except it's free for use.
Ovi store is a part of the Ovi suite of services and Ovi services are actually rather quite good and are superb value seeing as they are free. And get this, their aim is to target the next generation of users, not this generation. Ovi services are targetted at 3rd tier countries. It's a long term move to consolidate and build their future base and has less to do with current users; although they also can use the service.
Only a few more years until it's available for the N900.
(Yes, there's a hack but nothing official.)