Nokia starts roll-out of Apple App Store rival

Nokia started on Monday the roll-out of its much-anticipated online content store, aiming to follow the success of Apple's App Store.

Nokia said it had started moving Ovi Store to production servers preparing for the global commercial launch, and the store was opened to users of few of its phone models in Australia and Singapore on Monday.

Nokia has promised to open the store globally this week.

To cope with slowing phone demand Nokia is building a new business from mobile Internet services — like games or maps — but is scaling back separate investment plans due to the slowdown, and focusing on merging the delivery of services.

Nokia, which made its first ever quarterly pretax loss in January-March, is cutting annual costs at its key handset unit alone by more than 700 million euros ($979.7 million) to counter plunging demand.