Apps by Six Indian Developers in Ovi Store Achieve One Million Downloads Each

Six Indian developer companies saw more than one million of their apps downloaded from Ovi Store as of June 30 2011, according to official data from Nokia Developer Forum. This is a significant feat that indicates Indian developers coming of age in app development space.Moreover, India is the leading region for Ovi store app downloads, thanks largely to the mobile boom in the country. According to Nokia Developer Forum data, Ovi Store daily download requests recently soared to 7.62 million, crossing the 7 million milestone for the first time and beating the previous record, set only few days earlier, by 840,000 downloads. This significant jump in content consumption on Ovi Store follows the global removal of the registration/login requirement to download free items from the mobile web channel. The biggest increase was in India where, downloads more than tripled, making India the top country by downloads from the mobile web channel.

The Nokia Forum data shows that APAC apps developed by Indian developers are preferred ahead of those from Japan(3 companies), Taiwan(2 companies) and Singapore(2 companies). The top six Indian companies with the Ovi store apps are: Aims MIGITAL Technovations Pvt. Ltd. (Delhi), Al Siraj Ltd. (Kerala), Arch Mobile Solutions Private Limited (Chandigarh), Indiagames (Mumbai), Nextwave Multimedia Pvt Ltd. (Chennai), Spice Labs (Delhi).

As of June 3, 2011, there were 170 developers from 44 markets that have more than 1 million downloads of their Ovi Store content each.

Amongst the applications from Ovi Store, Opera Software appears to be the most sought after one, with Opera's mobile web browser apps, including Opera Mini 4.2 and Opera Mobile 10, having been collectively downloaded over 13 million times in Ovi Store from more than 190 markets.

However, it is still a long way to go for Indian app developers when compared to top developers from across the world. Russian company HeroCraft is one such example. The company’s mobile game, Farm Frenzy, reached the milestone of six million downloads from Ovi Store users in over 190 markets, a year ago, in June 2010. By December 2010, HeroCraft achieved a benchmark of more than 12 million total downloads from Ovi Store, thanks to its bouquet of offerings such as Yumsters! and Zum-Zum. By June 2011, HeroCraft saw over 27 million total downloads from Nokia's Ovi Store.

So what did HeroCraft do right everytime? For one, they stressed their global focus by making their apps available in as many as 10 different languages. Secondly, they targeted to reach maximum Nokia users, the largest mobile phone user base of the world. Third, they diversified into other platforms such as Symbian 5.0, thereby reaching out to even larger user base. And finally, HeroCraft focused on their monetization strategy by partnering with in-app advertisers who let consumers download the game for free and in the process expanded the user base even further.

For now, it’s just a matter of time for Indian developers to reach that stage.