Nokia appears to have won back apps market share from RIM, just two weeks after the BlackBerry vendor reported download numbers for its App World store that suggested it was stealing a march on the Finnish vendor’s app efforts. Nokia today announced that its Ovi Store is achieving 2.3 million downloads per day. Given that the company claimed last month that around 70 percent of Ovi Store downloads are applications (and assuming that percentage remains unchanged), that would mean that 1.61 million apps are being downloaded from the Ovi Store on a daily basis. Rival RIM said two weeks ago that its App World store had hit the 1.5 million daily download milestone. Prior to RIM’s announcement, Nokia said in mid September that 2 million Ovi Store downloads were happening daily, which equated to 1.4 million apps.

Nokia today also claimed that 70 developers and publishers have each surpassed the million download mark for their content in the Ovi Store, with names including Digital Chocolate, Electronic Arts, PepsiCo and Gameloft. HeroCraft, a publisher of content that includes the game Farm Frenzy, has received more than 10 million downloads, and Offscreen, a developer of a variety of touchscreen apps, has more than 45 million.

Nokia’s announcements today follow moves last month to lure developers with new offerings. A few weeks ago the firm used Nokia World to unveil a raft of announcements aimed at its community of more than two million developers, as the world’s largest handset vendor put apps at the forefront of its future strategy. Highlights at Nokia World included the availability of in-app purchase support, improved revenue share, launch of an SDK (Software Development Kit) for Series 40 feature phones, improvements to the Qt SDK, and free Java and Symbian signing.

Meanwhile other statistics touted by Nokia today include:

  • 140 million active Nokia service users worldwide
  • 200,000 daily sign ups to Ovi
  • 190 countries supporting Ovi and its associated Maps, Music, Messaging, Store and Life Tools services
  • Ovi Maps ‘walk and drive navigation’ now available in 78 countries and 46 languages, including public transit details in more than 80 cities
  • Ovi Music available in 38 markets with approximately 11 million tracks
  • Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat have surpassed 17 million accounts, with Nokia Messaging delivering push email and IM to an active user base of 4 million people
  • Ovi Life Tools has more than 4.7 million subscribers in China, India and Indonesia