Nokia claims that its Ovi Store is experiencing around 1 million application downloads every day, although the Finnish company appears to have bowed to pressure and is set to launch a major revamp of the store next Spring. In an interview with the Financial Times, George Linardos, head of products at Nokia’s media group, said downloads are growing at 100 percent month-over-month and the Ovi suite – which also includes music and mapping services – now has 80 million active users, up from 54 million in August. Meanwhile Linardos admitted that the Ovi Store had been outpaced by Apple after complaints on stability and reliability and the company is completely redeveloping its store. New features will reportedly include in-application payments, a redesigned user interface that makes apps easier to discover, and faster operation. Longer-term, Ovi Store will include recommendations based on friends’ app purchases and more localised content.

Nokia’s Ovi Store has been heavily criticised since its launch earlier this year. Rival Apple announced in September it had hit the two billion application download milestone only a year after launch. Nokia needs to make the Ovi Store a success; the world’s largest handset vendor is betting on mobile services as a new strategy to help it fight falling margins in the devices space. It is targeting net services sales of EUR2 billion or more in 2011 and wants 300 million active users for its services by the end of that year.