The problem with releasing a marketplace's download stats is it allows you to be directly compared to your competitors.

That's exactly what one company has done with Nokia's most recent Ovi Store numbers.

Mobile industry advisory firm asymco claims the current download rates on Nokia's marketplace leave it trailing the App Store by some distance.

Download derby

At the start of October, Nokia revealed daily downloads on the Ovi Store had hit 2.3 million a day – up from May's daily rate of 1.7 million.



However, asymco claims there's little reason to get excited about such growth, given that Apple's App Store currently hosts 17.7 million downloads a day.

"The slope of the Ovi curve does not yet compel one to get excited over the platform’s prospects in the near term," says asymco technical director Horace Dediu in the blog post.

"However to get a true picture, one needs to not only look at absolute download numbers but also the probability of any one user or device being used to download an app."

App appetite

Doing so, Dediu concludes that the weekly download rate for Symbian users is 0.12 apps, compared to 1.24 for the App Store.

To reach the respective rates, Dediu assumes that there are 100 million active iOS users globally - discounting 20 million from Apple's official total due to upgrades - compared to the 140 million Nokia claims have access to the Ovi Store.



"The rate of downloads per device for iOS is more than 10 times higher [than on the Ovi Store]," he concludes.

"This is the more interesting number if you are a developer."

[source: asymco]