Nokia introduces new internet services brand

Nokia introduces new internet services brand
By Ivan Gale, Staff Reporter, Gulfnews, August 30, 2007

London: Nokia announced a new internet services brand called Ovi, featuring gaming, music and navigational services, that will appear on select Nokia devices in the UAE beginning in October.

Following on the success of Web 2.0, or the personalisation of the internet through social networking and file-sharing, Nokia is seeking to bring the internet to its mobile users.

The Finnish mobile phone giant will launch two web portals, the Nokia Music Store and N-Gage, from which users may access music and games, respectively, via PCs and download them to mobile devices. Nokia Maps will offers maps and city guides more directly to compatible mobile devices, while other Internet based services are expected in the coming months.

From a company that once produced rubber boots and now is known as the world's biggest mobile phone maker, Nokia's latest move sends a clear endorsement of the transformative power of the internet.

"Whether you call it Web 2.0 or something else, its clear people are using the internet far beyond its original role," said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia's president and CEO, during a press conference in London yesterday announcing the new service.

"Great companies renew themselves as the world changes," he said, "and this world doesn't work the way the old world did."

Featuring a new user interface catering to the latest music, gaming and Internet needs of its users, Nokia will introduce its first Ovi-compatible device, the N81, to the UAE starting in October. When Ovi's music portal launches, Nokia officials confirmed it will include Arabic titles, while an Arabic-language version of Ovi will be released sometime in 2008.

The introduction of a fully-fledged gateway for internet services is a culmination of 18 months of investing in online properties for Nokia. Recently it acquired music site Loudeye, media sharing site twango and mapping service gate5.

It also represents a second effort at gaming. Although Nokia introduced n-gage gaming system on mobile phones since 2003, it underperformed initial expectations. Now, with a more sophisticated suite of hardware and software on its latest N-Series phones, Nokia believes the time is now right to begin a fresh push.

Part of this optimism stems from its own successes, and also from observing the dramatic rise in portable gaming devices.

Kallasvuo said Nokia shipped 80 million converged devices in 2006, and this is expected to climb to 120 million units this year. Meanwhile, he said the global gaming market was 25 billion euros, and more than a third of that came from portable devices.

Source : Nokia introduces new internet services brand article in Gulfnews