If you've ever considered developing applications and selling through the Ovi Store, then you might like to read a blog post by Sebastian Brannstrom (@Teknolog). Sebastian is the author of the now de facto podcast agent "Podcatcher". In the post he explains why he put Podcatcher on the Ovi Store, and shares some of his sales data. It's an interesting read with some very unexpected results. Read on for more. 

Sebastian says he has treated Podcatcher very much as an experiment to see how successful app store sales can be.

"My reasons for doing this was as much from curiosity as anything else. Over the last two years we’ve heard about amazing success stories from the Apple App Store (TM!), and I was interested to see how well apps can do in the Ovi store."

A very encouraging point that Sebastian makes relates to piracy and how to compete with "free".

"As a mentioned at the top of the post, about 1000 copies of Podcatcher were downloaded for free from Forum Nokia Projects. So more people bought the app than downloaded it for free. This shows how important the smooth app store experience is for users. Downloading and installing Podcatcher from Forum Nokia is a bit of a hassle, and people are willing to pay a small amount for convenience. (How is that for an argument against the music industry morons who say they can’t compete with piracy)."

Other key points to take away from Sebastian's post are:

• The Ovi Store's biggest market is Europe.
• A surprising amount of sales come from the United States.
  • Note to the reader: This is more counter intuitive than surprising.
    The Ovi Store was recently found to be outselling the Android Market. 
• Media coverage does not guarantee increased sales.

Sebastian plans to sell more applications on the Ovi Store. In the meantime though, please click through to the post so you can read more about Sebastian's experience of the Ovi Store.

David Gilson for All About Symbian, 11th April 2011