By Ewan MacLeod in app stores — May 26, 2009

Nokia Ovi Store is open for business

Over the weekend, Nokia Ovi Store was soft-launched in Australia this weekend to allow the team, sweat pour off the proverbial forehead, to check everything was ready for launch.

And it is.

We’re live. And the mobile industry is changed for good.

Finally you can deploy an application, easily, for Nokia customers. It used to be an absolutely torturous process — now, the discovery is much, much improved.

Similarly, if you’d like, for example, some Star Trek wallpapers on your Nokia, you can now click-click and be done. No more arsing around. Fantastic.

Here’s a screenshot from the desktop:

The store is wholly sluggish this morning because the whole world and his dog is checking in, downloading and playing around.

You can already see just how massively successful the store is going to be. I’m looking at a ‘futuristic‘ Star Trek Ringtone — that’s priced free. On the right hand side I’ve got these options:

And it’s free? I’ll have that.

As for billing, well your operator will take care of your purchase processing in Australia, Britain, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Singapore and Spain. So it’s just one click to buy. Magic from a mobile developer standpoint. I’m going to give it a try in a few minutes.

And for revenue sharing? Well 30% revenue share is fast becoming standard across the app store world and Nokia is keeping to that — there are a few questions over exactly how the splits will work but I’m sure we’ll see some further clarification on this soon.

Here’s what store.ovi.com looks like on my Nokia N82 browser: