Nokia is to close its sucessful MOSH social file sharing app and concentrate on the upcoming Ovi Store applications and digital content store.
MOSH – MObile SHaring – is an experimental file sharing network for Nokia mobile phones designed to lket users download applications directly to their phones, over the air and let users share their own apps, themes, etc. Nokia has now decided to shut down the service and concentrate on Ovi Store.
MOSH had been criticised for allowing pirated copies of commercial apps and games – something that Nokia did try to clamp down on, but which kept popping up. ‘Adult’ content was also rife on the MOSH network, which may account for its popularity in some quarters – over 137 million downlaods have been recorded, with virtualy no marketing behind it.
On the plus side, this does imply that Ovi Store is nearly upon us. Nokia handsets had seemed like poor relations to the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android platforms with their fancy app stores/markets. Finding apps and games for Symbian has always been much more of a haphazard affair in comparison.
Ovi Store is the ‘app store’ component of Nokia’s all-encompassing Ovi social software suite. Ovi Store is expected to go live in May. Nokia has said that it will use next month’s Developer’s Summit to give “the latest updates about publishing to the Ovi Store” and to explain the store’s pricing policy.
