Nokia and Etisalat are looking forward to start a collaboration where users can download applications from the Nokia Ovi Store and get billed directly from through their mobile phone accounts. This collaboration will be available in all countries that Etisalat operates in i.e. UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt by this year.
The good thing is that any Etisalat customer can use this service post and/or prepaid accounts. However I’m not sure how Nokia users with contracts or mobile accounts from other operators will take react to this. I guess Nokia doesn’t really care at this point they just want to push people to download their apps by any means and pray that it will generate more sales, especially with the success of the iTunes and soon to be contenders Blackberry App world as well as the Android Market. Nokia thinks that non-Etisalat users can still carry on buying the apps through the credit cards as they do now.
The Ovi Store currently has over 35,000 items that are available for download by consumers, with over 4 million downloads a day globally. I’m not so sure this collaboration will add any significant changes to any of the involved parties, but lets wait and see.
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