BARCELONA, SPAIN: Nokia recently announced the launch of its context aware Ovi Store at Mobile World Congress. 

Tony Cripps, principal analyst, Ovum, says: "No real surprise here. But Nokia's Ovi Store is not simply a "me-too" take on the barinstorming iPhone App Store, although its concept undoubtedly owes a great deal to Apple's success."

"For one, Nokia's version is aimed at a far broader user demographic, with both mid-range Series 40 devices and high-end S60 handsets being catered for. For another, Nokia will use location and other personal information (with user buy-in) to enable it to deliver a more personalised buying experience than its rivals. 'Context' is something of a Nokia obsession of late, so this could prove interesting, but is as yet an unknown," Cripps adds.

"That said, the Ovi Store is not guaranteed to emulate the success of the Apple App Store. Nokia plans to use operator billing and credit card processing for content purchasing. However, neither means is as natural to users as Apple's fully integrated experience. Nor, does it seem, is Nokia supplying the means to update content and applications on the device, let alone the firmware itself, as Apple has done. Perhaps Nokia's saving that for a premium offering where there's less need to kow-tow to operators?," he adds.