All hopes are not lost on Nokia as store clocks 2 billion downloads

Nokia might be bleeding bucketfuls of its market share to competitors, but it seems all is not lost elsewhere in the extremely competitive sector as far as the once-supreme cellphone manufacturer in concerned. Nokia store downloads have touched a humongous 2 billion mark. Nokia Store is an application-based store offered by Nokia on the lines of Google Play on Android platform.

Nokia store comes pre-loaded on S40 and Asha platforms which have accounted for a total share of 50% of the 2 billion downloads figure. Games, Entertainment and utility-based apps have emerged to be most popular with users.

While Action Games have emerged as No. 1 downloaded category, Adventure games are at No. 2, Sport games at No. 3, Entertainment related apps including video and movies at No. 4, followed by Utility based apps at No. 5.

Indiagames, Reliance games and Rendered Ideas Softgame Pvt Ltd have occupied the top three positions respectively as developers.

Credit for this success goes to Nokia's strategy of unveiling handsets with access to internet at affordable prices. The lowest cost device which has access to Nokia Store is the Nokia 109 at a pocket-friendly price of Rs 1,975. Nokia also offers a unique way of saving on data charges through its 'Xpress Browser ' which compresses data and thus makes internet inexpensive. The most interesting aspect of Nokia store's success is that every visit to this app store translates into a download. This 100% download rate is unique to Nokia as in case of other smartphones like Apple and Android-based phones, every visit to app store might not lead to a download. Numbers for Nokia store might still look dismal provided Apple's App Store reached 50 billion downloads in May and Android's Play Store overtook the figures in early August.

Nokia's strategy of providing access to internet at pocket-friendly prices will help it position itself in a market where smartphones are eating a lion's share of the pie by offering fancy handsets with full-fledged internet surfing abilities.