Nokia told Forbes that its new Ovi app store will open later this month with about 20,000 items ready for download.
Research In Motion (RIM) and the Google-led Android Marketplace have opened app stores but with far smaller inventories. RIM opened with a few hundred apps, and Android opened with only dozens.
To date, the most notable competition in the mobile apps segment is Apple’s App Store. In April, Apple recorded its 1 billionth download and a catalog of 15,000 applications.
Apple recently unveiled the new iPhone 3.0 OS and developer SDK. The new operating system will give developers thousands of new APIs, which some in the industry say will lead to another explosion of application development for the Apple App Store.