Mobile Round-Up: Palm Apps, Bluetooth, Ovi Store, N97Mobile Round-Up: Palm Apps, Bluetooth, Ovi Store, N97

Here's a collection of smaller stories that may not have gotten a blog post all to themselves. Palm has added a whopping 12 new apps to the Apps Catalog. Bluetooth headset usage has plummeted. The number of Ovi Store users is surprisingly small. The N97 is set to get a major firmware update.Palm Apps Catalog Update

This cracks me up. On the Official Palm Blog today, Palm made sure to point out that there are a handful of new applications available from the Apps Catalog Beta. The fact that Palm considers a handful of new applications news is telling of just how few apps there really are. In any event, if you're using the Palm Pre, be sure to check out the 12 new apps, which include: DirectTV NFL Mobile, Tip 'Em, Translation, The Globe and Mail, T-Maps from Geezer Networks, Taurus, How-To, CoinFlip, Zilch Lite, UberPass, PhotoDialer, and Lemonade.

Bluetooth Plummet

According to a new study by Strategy Analytics, the usage of Bluetooth headsets has dropped precipitously. In the U.S., "Only 26% of Bluetooth headset owners use their devices every day, which is down from 43% in 2008." Additionally, "The number of Bluetooth headset owners that are satisfied with the style of their device dropped 27% since 2008." Where do you stand, are you using Bluetooth less?

Ovi Store Users

Here's an interesting nugget. Since its launch on May 26, Nokia's Ovi Store has delivered just 10 million applications to end users' phones. Does that sound like a lot to you? It certainly isn't a bad figure. But the real kernel is this: each user averaged about six downloads each. That means only about 1.67 million people are using the Ovi Store. Considering the hundreds of millions of S60 handsets out there, I'd say 1.67 million is a pretty meager number of users.

N97 Firmware Update

At Nokia World this week, Nokia showed off a major firmware update for the N97 multimedia computer. According to a video shot of the firmware, it solves many of the phone's problems, including stability, the default number of pre-installed apps, and more freed up system storage for applications. Watch the video here: