Nokia is confident its Ovi app store which is set for launch this May will be a better offering than Apple’s App Store for the iPhone. The company says that not only will it have an initial customer base of 50 million compared to the iPhone’s 20 million, but it will also have a faster and more liberal approval process–decisions will be made within a week–for developers, and personalized offerings for customers based on location and previous purchases.
One of the big setbacks for developers at the moment looks to be the Ovi app store payment methods. While 70 percent of sales revenue is supposed to end up in the developer’s pocket, that will only remain true if applications are purchased directly from the Ovi portal with a credit card. At launch, 9 separate markets will also offer application purchases through carriers. If that’s the case, developers won’t end up getting the full cut, and judging from Nokia’s N-Gage gaming platform downloads, customers will choose to purchase through a carrier the vast majority of the time.
Anything below a 70 percent cut will make Symbian applications the worst paying out of the variety of app stores launching this year. And without a half decent touchscreen phone from Nokia or a customer base in the app-hungry United States, will developers bother?