Nokia yesterday enhanced its mobile maps offerings and claimed to be on track for the launch of its high-profile application and content store, Ovi, by the end of May. The world’s largest handset vendor announced a new version of Ovi Maps, enabling users to add their own location-based content to maps that can be synched between mobile devices and the Web. Nokia also opened up Ovi Maps to third-party developers with the launch of the Ovi Maps Player API. This enables content creators to integrate the 3D maps into websites and apps using basic JavaScript.

Meanwhile, Ovi Store – announced at the GSMA Mobile World Congress last February and Nokia’s biggest planned push yet into the Internet services space – is on track to be launched by the end of next week, according to a Reuters report. The store is expected to be the biggest application store debut to date, featuring a catalogue of 20,000 items. In comparison, Apple and RIM launched their stores with a few hundred apps, whilst Google’s opened with a few dozen. The Ovi Store will feature a broad selection of digital content, including an entire category of short videos and ‘mobisodes.’ Nokia will give 70 percent of all download revenue to developers, the same share offered to developers by Apple, Google and Microsoft. Nokia is hoping to replicate the success of Apple’s App Store, which launched in June last year and currently offers 40,000 apps and has recently hit the 1 billion download milestone.