The Finnish phone maker is planning to launch an online store for mobile application called Ovi Store later this month, Forbes.com reports. The Nokia store will debut with a catalog of 20,000 items (while Apple and RIM launched their stores with a few hundred apps, as a comparison).

Users can access the store two different ways. It will ship pre-loaded on the company’s new flagship handset, the N97, before July, and be included in phones released in the future. Consumers who own other, recent Nokia phones will also be able to download the store from the Web onto their handsets. The idea: People will buy more Nokia devices if they are paired with great services.

According to Niklas Savander, Nokia’s executive vice president of services, the Ovi Store won’t have is user-generated content. All developers must register with Nokia before creating apps.  “Nokia will reject objectionable content like gambling applications and pornography, but won’t block services that compete with its own products,” he says.

Ovi was announced on August 29th 2007 at the Go Play event in London, then the public beta was released August 28th, 2008. The word “ovi” means “door” in Finnish.

[via Forbes.com]