Despite its massive success on the Apple App Store, Rovio's Angry Birds was released on Nokia's Ovi Store pretty much at the same time. Indeed it was initially more successful in terms of downloads there too.

Unsurprisingly, the Finnish game developer has close links to the Finnish phone manufacturer, and its CEO Mikael Hed was on stage at Nokia World 2010 to talk about how the company will be releasing the first game on Ovi Store to take advantage of its new in-app purchase model.

Of course, that game is Angry Birds, with the in-app purchase being the Mighty Eagle smart bomb.

We caught up with Hed to get his opinion on whether Nokia was now a viable platform for game developers.

Pocket Gamer: Were you impressed by Nokia's announcements at Nokia World 2010?

Mikael Hed: Yes, because Nokia finally has a whole range of phones that are nice to use and are powerful enough to run high end games.

I also liked Nokia's clear commitment to continue making it easier for developers to make games for Ovi Store.

What do you think about the N8 device?

Angry Birds runs beautifully on it, so the device is perfect!

Nokia was emphasising the 12 megapixel camera, but for game developers the more important part is that the device is powerful enough to run any game, and has a much more responsive touchscreen than earlier models.

There are plenty of reasons to believe people will buy a lot of games for their N8s.

Will you be supporting Symbian^3 as a mobile operating system?

Yes, we will support Symbian^3 on all Nokia handsets.

What are your views about MeeGo?

MeeGo is a more flexible OS than Symbian, and being based on Linux, it's probably easier for most developers to support. The OS has a lot of promise, and I am sure that we will see some very interesting devices running MeeGo in the months to come.

Do you think Ovi Store is now a viable commercial app store for games?

The S^3 devices are rolling out, and Nokia estimates it will sell 50 million of them. These will be devices whose users will buy many applications, so it is starting to get very interesting to be on Ovi Store.

I am convinced we will see some significant revenue from Ovi Store in the coming months.

Were you impressed with the potential of being able to do operator billing and in-app purchases via Ovi Store, even at a reduced revenue split of 60:40?

Operator billing is very, very important to ensure significant sales in a large part of the world, including most of Europe. Customers find operator billing to be the most appealing form of payment, and not everyone has a credit card, so operator billing significantly increases our potential customer base.

In-app purchasing (or Mighty Eagle), as we call it, is a great way to sell additional content to an established user base.

I appreciate the clarified revenue split, since there used to be some uncertainty about the final price the developer was getting for an app.

How big an issue is it for you that Nokia doesn't have any presence in the North American market?

Nokia is very strong in pretty much the rest of the world, so that compensates for its small market share in North America.

What do you think Nokia still needs to do to encourage more game developers to support it?

Nokia needs to keep doing what it is already doing at the moment, i.e. keep making it easier for developers to make applications for its devices, and to get those apps on Ovi Store, keep making strong devices, and to make sure that payments work smoothly in all countries.

Thanks to Mikael for his time

You can read my 10 reasons you should be making games for Nokia's Ovi Store opinion piece here.