Nokia shows us the door

John Chan | Aug 29, 2007

Mobile phone giant Nokia has announced Ovi, a platform for its trio of Internet services. Ovi means door in Finnish, representing its purpose as a gateway to Nokia's new music store, maps and N-Gage services.

Ovi will go live during the fourth quarter of 2007 in English, and Nokia expects to launch it in other languages in the first half of 2008. Of the three services that will be available, the Nokia Music Store is the only completely new item. The other two, N-Gage and Nokia Maps, have existed in other forms within the company's portfolio previously, though they will now come with an online element.

According to Nokia, there will be tracks for sale at its music store from Universal Music Group which represents many popular artists like Def Leppard, Luciano Pavarotti and U2. Other yet unnamed labels have also signed on, and the company said there will be millions of tracks available for sale after its launch.

Currently, the dominant force in online music sales is Apple's iTunes Music Store. The iTunes application sells music, videos and games for iPods. Nokia's range of services with Ovi is very similar, though its N-Gage service seems to be a much more important part of Ovi than iPod games are to iTunes. An important aspect of Nokia's Music Store is that it can be accessed from a mobile phone. Tracks can be bought over the cellular network, which is still something that can't be done using Apple's iPhone for iTunes purchase.

The N-Gage was Nokia's range of gaming phones which discontinued in late 2005. The name is now used for its new gaming service which will serve up games for various Nokia Series 60 handsets. The N81, also announced today, is one such mobile phone designed to improve the gaming experience with its button orientation. More on the new N-Gage here.

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