Surprise, surprise! German research firm research2guidance says apps in Nokia's Ovi Store are downloaded 2.5 times more than their counterparts in Apple's App Store, despite the ever declining market share held by Symbian. It turns out that the formula to a high number of app downloads is a combination of an under-populated app store and a "non-hyped" platform. As of the second quarter of 2011, three app stores were seeing higher average downloads compared to Apple's App Store -- namely Ovi Store, leading by 160 percent, Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, leading by 80 percent and RIM's BlackBerry App World, leading by 43 percent. Android Market, the official app store for Google's smartphone and tablet platform, saw a slightly lower number of downloads, trailing the App Store by 5 percent. Of course, when we look at the bigger picture, Apple's App Store and Android Market still hold the lion's share of total downloads. In fact, Apple reached the milestone of 1 billion downloaded apps in April 2009, and has seen over an estimated 15 billion downloads to date. Android reached the 1 billion downloaded apps this summer, and is closing in at 5 billion at the time of writing.

Photo credit: Dekuwa