Nokia’s finally getting their act together and taking Apple head on. First, they came out with their first modern full-touchscreen device, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, to battle it out with the iPhone and other touchscreen phones in the market, and now, they’ve launched their own mobile app store, Ovi Store. Most, if not all, of the current available apps and content are free so you can download to your heart’s delight. What’s noticeable different with the Nokia’s Ovi Store as compared to the App Store is that you can access it through the desktop or laptop and have an appropriate link sent your mobile phone to download the particular app and content. Unfortunately, unlike iTunes and the App Store, you can’t download to your PC/Mac for later uploading to your mobile phone. However, the good thing about Ovi Store is that it also provides content for a variety of Nokia phones and not just the 5800 XpressMusic and other new products.

[ovi store via engadget, cellphones etc]
More after the break.

If you’ve got an S60 running Nokia phone, you can try to download the Ovi Store client by following these simple steps:

1. Open Download, choose Options > Refresh content
2. Go to Nokia Extra’s Category, an Ovi Store entry should be there
3. Download and install the Ovi Store app
4. After it’s installed, Ovi Store should be found under the Installations / My Extras (or similar) folder

The upcoming Nokia N97 will be one of the first mobile phones to have the Ovi Store app pre-installed already. Here’s what it should look like on the N97 as well as on the 5800 XpressMusic phone.

We’re not sure if the pricing depicted in the image above is any indication of what’s forthcoming, but if it is, it looks like paid Ovi Store apps won’t come cheap. 3 Euros seem to be the average price for paid apps which is definitely a far cry from the $0.99 of iPhone apps in the App Store.

Anyway, the Ovi Store is still in its early stages so we’re expecting a lot of surprise along the way. We’re just keeping our fingers crossed that it won’t happen in the form of hefty price tags for downloadable content because that wouldn’t make sense at all especially if their planning to overthrown Apple at the top spot as far as mobile downloads are concerned.