Finland's Ovi

Known for its high featured mobile phones, Nokia, is coming with its ovi web portal – The new Ovi, making foray into web services market. The Finland based company has designed Ovi to run music download services, games, maps and other online applications.

Nokia says that Ovi, which means ‘door’ in Finnish or is known as a nickname for Oliver, will open new market possibilities for the Finnish mobile handset manufacturer. The company is keen to start generating revenues from services like sale of games, music over mobile Internet with its innovating Ovi.

The company has also launched variety of new phones in the market, including the Nokia 81, a flagship music phone to give competition to Apple’s iPhone. These phones would be available on its new website.

As a part of its Ovi brand of Internet Services, Nokia is reviving N-gage platform in a new way. The new portal allows you to browse a wide selection of game titles, download free trails and purchase the games directly from Nokia. You can either purchase the game over the air or directly download on your PC first. You can buy game titles, including EA Sports’ FIFA 08, The Sims 2 Pets, Tetris, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, and Crash Bandicoot, directly from Nokia.

The new Nokia Music store is ‘dual download’, allowing download over the air or through ’sideloading’ of music from a PC. Tracks are delivered in WMA format with Windows DRM protection, and cost €1 with entire albums starting at €10. The company announced that some 3m tracks will be available, including music “from major labels”. However, whether or not Nokia had deals with all four major labels was not disclosed.

The N-Gage platform will ultimately run on all Series 60 (smartphone) devices but is limited to a handful of handsets at launch. N-Gage games are C++ based, which allows for better performance than J2ME, the current programming language used for the majority of mobile games.

Nokia will also run and manage an online store which allows users to download free trial versions of games, and like the music store is ‘dual download’. The store allows payment by credit card and also integrates with the billing systems of over 80 mobile operators. The N-Gage Arena, a multiplayer and community platform, will allow developers to create multiplayer games.

Mail, messaging and search applications are provided through partnerships with both Yahoo! and Microsoft, as well as Nokia’s own messaging application, Gizmo. The Nokia Maps application allows free downloads of maps and sale of additional content such as city guides. The photo sharing application is based on the technology of Twango, which Nokia acquired in July 2007.

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Historically, Nokia’s attempts to move into mobile content have not met with success and the launch of these new services immediately attracted criticism from Nokia’s biggest customers, the network operators. Orange threatened to cancel its order for handsets integrated with the Music Store until it had assessed the impact this service could have on its own mobile music sales. 3 UK, which accounts for 75 per cent of the UK’s mobile music sales, reportedly followed suit.

In contrast, the relaunched N-Gage has received a warm welcome from the mobile games industry. Network operators seem unconcerned about the impact on games revenues, even though Screen Digest predicts that the market for mobile games in 2007 will be more than four times larger than that for mobile music.

Around 10 mobile games publishers have agreed to support the platform, including the top three companies (Electronic Arts, Gameloft and Glu). Nokia’s previous iteration of the N-Gage was released as a hardware platform in October 2003 but design problems and consumer disinterest in such a niche device led to very low market penetration and subsequently publishers hastily withdrew support.

In contrast, 16m Series 60 devices were sold last year, device volumes which should lead to significantly greater penetration and more extended publisher support.

Nokia has introduced Ovi, its new Internet service, expanding from a focus on mobile devices to offering a range of Internet services.

Ovi, means ‘door’ in Finnish and looks to enable consumers to access their existing social network, communities and content, as well as act as a gateway to Nokia services.
 
As part of Ovi, Nokia announced the Nokia Music Store and N-Gage, two services that make it easy for people to discover, try and buy music and games from a range of artists and publishers, including exclusive content only available through Nokia.

Also under the Ovi umbrella is Nokia Maps, a navigation service that offers maps, city guides and more directly to compatible mobile devices.
 
Ovi is the gateway to Nokia’s Internet services, including the Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, and N-Gage games. It will also be an open door to web communities, enabling people to access their content, communities and contacts from a single place, either directly from a compatible Nokia device or from a PC. The first version of Ovi.com is scheduled to go live in English during the fourth quarter of 2007 and additional features and languages expected to go live during the first half of 2008.
 
The Nokia Music Store offers millions of tracks from major artists, independent labels as well as a broad range of local artists from around the world. The store is accessible via a desktop computer or directly from a compatible Nokia device, such as the Nokia N81 or Nokia N95 8GB multimedia computer. Users can browse for new music, buy what they like or add a song to their wishlist to download later. Users can also transfer purchased songs to your mobile device and with the built-in music player, create playlists on the go.
 
The Nokia Music Store offers full track streaming on PCs as well as individual track and album purchase. The store opens across key European markets this fall with additional stores in Europe and Asia opening over the coming months. In Europe, individual tracks cost EUR 1.00 and albums from EUR 10.00, with a monthly subscription for PC streaming for EUR 10.00.
 
N-Gage allows users to find, try and buy games directly from compatible Nokia devices. By selecting the N-Gage application on compatible Nokia devices, users can preview available games, connect with friends, read reviews or download a free demo. They can buy games either with a credit card or by charging it to their monthly phone bill. The application is expected to be available for download from here in November 2007.

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Along with announcing a brand-new lineup of handsets, Nokia is also venturing into the brave new world of Internet services. It’s called Ovi, which is “door” in Finnish, and it signifies Ovi’s open access to existing social networks like MySpace, Flickr, and Facebook right from a compatible Nokia phone.

But the big news here is that Ovi will also be a gateway to Nokia’s newly launched Internet services, which include the Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, and N-Gage games. Though Ovi can work on any personal computer, it is really designed for the mobile experience. It will go live in English in late 2007, while additional features and languages are expected next year.

The Nokia Music Store will have millions of tracks from a variety of music sources that include everything from major artists to independent labels. You can browse for music, buy the song directly over the air to your phone, or add a song to a wish list for later download.

If you like, you may also download the song to your PC and later load it onto the phone. The Nokia Music Store also supports full track streaming on the PC. Another neat thing about the Music Store is there will be a music recommendation engine based on songs you have purchased.

Songs are available in 192kbps WMA files, and can be managed either via Windows Media Player or Nokia’s own Music PC client. As for pricing, a song will cost one euro each, while a whole album will go for 10 euros. But the interesting part here is that Nokia will also allow you to have a subscription for PC streaming for 10 euros a month.

Right now, compatible Nokia phones include the following: Nokia 5310 XpressMusic, Nokia 5610 XpressMusic, Nokia 5700 XpressMusic, Nokia 6267, Nokia 6500 Classic, Nokia 6500 slide, Nokia 6555, Nokia 7500 Prism, Nokia 7900 Prism, Nokia N75, Nokia N76, Nokia N81, Nokia N81 8GB, Nokia N91 8GB, Nokia N95, and Nokia N95 8GB.

Music Store will open in certain European markets later this year, with additional stores opening next year.