Mobile giants Nokia and China Mobile have teamed up in the applications space, combining their offerings to promote the Mobile Market (MM)-Ovi Development Partner Program. News agency Xinhua claims the initiative aims to provide a ‘one-stop service’ for developers. Other reports suggest that China Mobile – the world’s largest operator by subscribers – will charge consumers for puchased apps via carrier billing. It is also believed that Nokia has reduced the registration fee for developers to only EUR1 (US$1.38), compared with Apple’s annual fee of US$99.

The Chinese apps market is becoming very competitive, with China Unicom and China Telecom launching app stores, and vendors such as Apple and Motorola stepping up their game. A combined Nokia/China Mobile offering could have a huge effect on the nascent market too; Nokia’s Ovi Store is seeing around 2 million app downloads globally per day, while China Mobile’s Mobile Market app store had over 50,000 registered developers, 20,000 applications available and over 25 million downloads by the end of June 2010.