Nokia opens Ovi store in Middle East through Etisalat

Nokia and Etisalat announced that through their ongoing collaboration, consumers across the Middle East will soon be able to purchase content from the Ovi store with billing directly to their mobile phone account. Etisalat subscribers will now have the choice to pay for any applications via their Etisalat account and the costs will be automatically accrued. The service will either be charged as part of the customer’s monthly bill for post paid accounts, or deducted from their prepaid airtime credit.

The Ovi store is a one stop shop where consumers can download mobile games, applications, videos, images and personalised content to their Nokia devices and Nokia smartphones. Over 35,000 items are now available for download by consumers, with over four million downloads a day globally with steady growth also in the Middle East region. The content is a combination of free and paid for.

In addition to operator billing through Etisalat, consumers will continue to have the existing payment option via credit card. The operator billing will be available in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt during 2011 and the cooperation will be extended to other Etisalat operations in the Middle East and Africa region going forward.