Nokia's Ovi opens up to music, games and services
August 29, 2007

The music stor will be available on computers as well as mobiles.

The new service Ovi, meaning door in Finnish, is Nokia's collection of services for music and gaming as well as other services. N-gage is now launched as a service to Nokia's N-series mobiles, and at the same time, Nokia is starting up a music store, challenging Apple and others.

Ovi, claims Nokia, will be the door to the Internet and gather all the Internet services of the company, whether it is images, music, navigation or something else. The investment is a way for Nokia to broaden its focus from the hardware to including the services used by the phones.

The first services available under the Ovi brand are maps, games and music.

N-gage is back
Nokia's gaming effort is doing a comeback, but this time it is not only mobile phones intended for gaming. Instead, the company invests in getting it on all phones, especially Nokia's N-series. The idea is to make it easy to download games and test before paying. In that way, Nokia hopes to attract more gamers.

When having test played the game, it is possible either to buy it or to rent it for a period of time. The service will be available globally during November. It can also be downloaded to phones supporting the service. It will also come preinstalled in new models such as the N95 8Gb and the new N81, also endowned with special gaming buttons.

It is also possible to get online to compete and chat with buddies in something called the N-gage arena.

Nokia launches music store
With Nokia's new Music Store, it will be possible to download music on the computer as well as the mobile, and the content will be synchronized either wirelessly or by using a cable. In other words, it should not matter if using the mobile or a computer when purchasing and listening to music. In addition to buying songs to download, it will also be possible to get them streamed over the internet.

To purchase one song will be 1 Euro and to get streaming music it will be 10 Euro. The shop will be launched in Europe during this autumn and then in Asia.

In addition, Nokia will offer music tips and recommendations; a service launched a year ago with the N95.

Maps updated
Nokias free program Nokia Maps is updated and is now a part of the Ovi package. The initiative to Ovi was initiated at the beginning of this year when Nokia launched Nokia Maps and services are now added.

- Nokia is the worlds leading mobile phone manufacturer and looking into the future, we will offer excellent phones, combined with exciting experiences and services making it easy for people to release the full capacity of the Internet, said Nokia boss Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.

By: Erik Mörner, Jonas Kämpe