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The Finnish handset giant rolled out to its 50 million customers worldwide, who can now download apps, games, videos, tools and location-based services across 50 Nokia devices.

The launch was marred with a number of technical issues, which the company blamed on 'extraordinarily' high spikes in traffic. A number of customers reported having trouble finding applications or were unable to access the app store all together.

A Nokia spokesman said: "We immediately began to address this issue by adding servers, which resulted in intermittent performance improvements. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused Ovi Store users and encourage you to continue giving us feedback as we develop the service further."

Nokia hopes Ovi can carve some of the same success claimed by Apple's App Store, which now houses over 35,000 applications and more than a billion downloads after two years of service.

The handset company is bent on rebranding itself as software and services provider amid slumping phone sales, with Ovi acting as its launching pad.

The problematic debut no doubt irked Nokia execs, who recently made the decision to drastically cut back investments in new services, slashing 450 jobs in their wake.

As Apple proved, the apps business is a highly lucrative one and Nokia has given Ovi a leg up against its rivals by allowing operator billing in a number of countries, including the UK.

'Operator billing' allows customers to charge app fees directly to their phone bills instead of having to use a credit card, prying open a point of entry for many customers.

However last month, Nokia announced that operator billing would not be available in the US, as initially planned.

The announcement was seen as a blow to the company, as Ovi would have been the first app store in the country to offer operator billing, which would have helped it stand tall against competitors such as Apple, or Microsoft's Windows Marketplace and Blackberry's Application Center.

Nokia said additional countries, languages, devices and features will be added throughout the year and AT&T plans to make Ovi Store available to its customers in the US later this year.

Globally, credit card billing is available through the mobile application and the mobile website.

Tero Ojanperä, executive vice president of Nokia Services, said: "Ovi Store is open for business and we've stocked the shelves with both local and global content for a broad range of Nokia devices"

"Ovi Store makes shopping for content and applications easy and fun for feature phone and smartphone owners alike."