Nokia opens up its patent library, Qualcomm announces a meta app store, and a Kama Sutra app tries to copulate on iPhone

It's usual to start the weekly Pocket Picks round up with mention of whatever Apple rumour is currently hot but this week, either because every single rumour has already been done, or perhaps because of the proximity of Worldwide Developers Conference, there has been something of a drought.

Instead we've had plenty of press missives eminating from Espoo, the home of Nokia.

A couple of significant ones concern the Technopolis Innovation Mill that Nokia has set up with various Finnish companies to enable its countrymen to access some of its unused patent library. Backed up by an 8 million euro investment fund, the plan is to enable startups to use the IP to further the Finnish high tech industry.

Equally interesting - if completely different in scope - is Nokia Life Tools suite, which are various mobile-based services embedded in devices sold in India to provide access to agricultural and educational information. A successful pilot scheme will now see a wider roll out of the scheme in India, with other countries in Asia and Africa planned throughout 2009.

Of course, Nokia is nothing if not about selling new devices and this week saw the announcement of the 6600i slider - an update to the 6600 slider, that Nokia says is its smallest 5 megapixel phone to-date.

Another tweak saw the offer to get a Nokia 5800 Comes With Music phone SIM-free for £299 in the UK. Indeed, 100 lucky punters got the device half price although they had to trade in their old mobile and a MP3 player and promise to download one album per month.

Orange UK also had something to talk about this week, with the news it had launched Samsung's Omnia HD - although for some reason, it was calling it the Samsung i8910HD. Still, the Symbian 60 phone boasts the 3.7-inch touchscreen, as well as an 8MP camera, GPS, 3G, Bluetooth and a FM radio, and that's what really manners.

The app store bandwagon continues to roll.

We like Qualcomm's idea of a meta app store that would support almost every device and that any operator could use. It's called Plaza Retail and will enable you to download Java, BREW, Flash and BlackBerry content with support planned in future for Android, Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian and LiMo.

Less encouraging was news of Carphone Warehouse's SnappLife Symbian app store. One fragmentation step too far?

Of course, there was some news about iPhone and the App Store.

One rumour doing the rounds is that Apple may introduce on device video downloads through iTunes via the version 3.0 firmware update. More concrete is news that social travel tracker site Dopplr will be bringing its Social Atlas application to the App Store in June, while online business directory outfit Scoot has already launched its UK location-based services app (although only for iPhone).

Couplings of a completely different kind are promised with the announcement of a Kama Sutra app however. Bulgarian developer Cramzy is waiting to see if the introduction of parental controls in the iPhone 3.0 SDK will enable its sexy baby to be born.