Nokia has been banging on about Ovi for a while now - so what exactly is it?
Ovi functions as a hub for Nokia's social networking (Nokia users can share photos via Ovi), music downloads and online backup services. Interestingly, you can also sync your contacts and calendar with the site - potentially useful, considering that Google's Sync service does not yet cover calendar syncing on Nokia S60 phones.
That vision just got bigger with Ovi Store. Here's how Nokia describes Ovi Store:
"The Ovi Store will consolidate the best experiences from the current content services including Download!, MOSH and WidSets to a single channel, and expands upon Ovi Services to deliver media influenced by the people and places that matter to you. It will amplify content provider and developer opportunities and simplify the consumer content discovery process by offering personally relevant, up-to-the-minute media for their devices. The content will range from applications, games and videos to widgets, podcasts, location-based applications and personalization content for Nokia S40 and S60 devices."
If you're thinking of Apple's App Store at this point, then you're not the only one. Ovi Store is a bit different in that its angling for content, rather than just apps, but the parallels are there. As with the new Windows Marketplace (which has a reported 20,000 apps), Google Android Market, and Microsoft's My Phone beta, the race to deliver cool things to your phone is truly on.