Nokia today announced that its Ovi Store has reached 3 million downloads per day. Nokia claims that the milestone was spurred by overall global demand and a recent update that gives users of Nokia's new Symbian smartphone family a friendlier look and feel as well as more popular apps and games.

The company also daid that more than 400 000 new software developers have joined the Forum Nokia in the past 12 months, and 92 of them have surpassed the million download milestone for their apps.

In related news, the Nokia Qt Software Development Toolkit (SDK) and the Qt SDK combined have been downloaded 1.5 million times as developers discover this approach can improve the speed and efficiency of creating apps for mobile devices, including smartphones such as the new Nokia N8, Nokia C7 and Nokia C6-01, which are shipping, and the recently announced Nokia E7. In a strategic move last month, Nokia announced unified application development around the Qt framework to simplify creating apps for Symbian-based devices and products that will be powered by the new MeeGo operating system.

Since Nokia began shipments of its new Symbian smartphones, starting with the Nokia N8 on September 30 of this year, the top downloaded free app globally was Q Torch, a utility app that turns your device into a flashlight, by CellApp Technology of India (also among top three in Europe, India and Southeast Asia/Pacific); the top downloaded paid app was Angry Birds, the smash hit game, by Rovio Mobile of Finland (also among top three in North America, Southeast Asia/Pacific and Europe) and the third most popular item downloaded globally was Need for Speed Shift HD, a game that delivers the thrill of high-performance racing by EA Mobile of the U.S. (also among top three in Central and South America, and Southeast Asia/Pacific).