The Finnish word for “door,” Ovi was supposed to be an umbrella brand for Nokia’s services, a “one-stop destination for communities, content, context and more.” And the company spent untold sums to push it into the public consciousness, but with little success. In the end, Ovi didn’t mean much of anything to Nokia’s users, who it turns out have a greater affinity for the far more recognizable Nokia brand.

Imagine that.

So Nokia is doing what it should have done years ago: It’s retiring the Ovi moniker and bringing its various mobile service offerings under the slightly better known Nokia brand.

“By centralizing our services identity under one brand, not two, we will reinforce the powerful master brand of Nokia and unify our brand architecture–while continuing to deliver compelling opportunities and experiences for partners and consumers alike,” Nokia CMO Jerri DeVard said in a statement. “The reasons for this decision include the fact that Nokia is a well-known and highly-loved brand the world over. Our mobile experiences are tightly integrated with our devices–there is no longer a differentiation.”

That’s one way to look at it. Another is that it was foolish to create differentiation in the first place, particularly with a unmemorable, nonsensical brand that had no chance of thriving in the massive shadow of the Nokia brand.

PREVIOUSLY:
• This is Nokia’s Answer to the App Store?

Discussions with developers show that Nokia (NOK) is making some headway in proving its value in a Silicon Valley preoccupied with Steve Jobs and Google (GOOG), but it’s still got a ways to go.

Nokia approached Andy Sheldon, founder and chief executive of San Francisco-based Fizwoz, at a Silicon Valley event in December, after he had showed off his Fizwoz application, a mobile auction application that connects cameraphone users to photo editors who could potentially buy their images. A month earlier, the company had launched a beta version of its application in the Apple App Store.

Mr. Sheldon says Nokia sat down with him and explained its geographical reach, and how it sells more smartphones a day than the competition. Nokia waived its access fees for the Ovi Store and even pointed Fizwoz to freelance developers it could use to develop the application for Nokia.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Not a week after confirming its interest in the netbook market, Nokia leapt into it, uncrating the Booklet 3G–a 2.8-pound “mini-laptop” with 3G, WiFi and A-GPS support, a 10-inch HD-ready display and a claimed 12 hours of battery life. The machine will feature an Intel (INTC) Atom processor and likely run a version of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows. Finally, it will support Ovi, Nokia’s (NOK) version of Apple’s (AAPL) App Store.

“A growing number of people want the computing power of a PC with the full benefits of mobility,” Kai Oistamo, Nokia’s executive vice president for devices, said in a statement. “We are in the business of connecting people and the Nokia Booklet 3G is a natural evolution for us. Nokia has a long and rich heritage in mobility and with the outstanding battery life, premium design and all day, always on connectivity, we will create something quite compelling. In doing so we will make the personal computer more social, more helpful and more personal.”
 
Quite a pledge. And one that Nokia must deliver on if it’s to become a full-fledged mobile solution provider.

“Nokia is not trying to move into the extremely competitive market for PCs in general, even though it describes the Booklet 3G as a mini-laptop. What it is doing is moving to protect its key markets,” said Gold Associates analyst Jack E. Gold. “Indeed, netbooks are increasingly being sold as mobile device alternatives (or supplements) to smartphones. Many have 3G radios included, can make voice calls (via VoIP) and are increasingly being sold and subsidized by traditional wireless carriers. Therefore, it is logical to see Nokia make this move.”

Not a week after confirming its interest in the netbook market, Nokia leapt into it, uncrating the Booklet 3G–a 2.8-pound “mini-laptop” with 3G, WiFi and A-GPS support, a 10-inch HD-ready display and a claimed 12 hours of battery life. The machine will feature an Intel (INTC) Atom processor and likely run a version of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows. Finally, it will support Ovi, Nokia’s (NOK) version of Apple’s (AAPL) App Store.

“A growing number of people want the computing power of a PC with the full benefits of mobility,” Kai Oistamo, Nokia’s executive vice president for devices, said in a statement. “We are in the business of connecting people and the Nokia Booklet 3G is a natural evolution for us. Nokia has a long and rich heritage in mobility and with the outstanding battery life, premium design and all day, always on connectivity, we will create something quite compelling. In doing so we will make the personal computer more social, more helpful and more personal.”
 
Quite a pledge. And one that Nokia must deliver on if it’s to become a full-fledged mobile solution provider.

“Nokia is not trying to move into the extremely competitive market for PCs in general, even though it describes the Booklet 3G as a mini-laptop. What it is doing is moving to protect its key markets,” said Gold Associates analyst Jack E. Gold. “Indeed, netbooks are increasingly being sold as mobile device alternatives (or supplements) to smartphones. Many have 3G radios included, can make voice calls (via VoIP) and are increasingly being sold and subsidized by traditional wireless carriers. Therefore, it is logical to see Nokia make this move.”

With a roughly 36 percent market share, Nokia is the world’s largest mobile phone maker. A hard won and enviable position, but a tough one to maintain, especially in a souring economy. More so now with innovative new rivals like Apple emerging in the sector the company has long dominated. But that’s the situation that CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo faces today.

The deteriorating mobile phone market is weighing heavily on Nokia (NOK). In January, the company warned that world-wide sales in ’09 are likely to fall 10 percent year-to-year. As Kallasvuo put it at the time, “the macro environment is challenging and, we believe, will remain so in 2009.” More challenging for Nokia, than for rivals Apple (AAPL) and Research in Motion (RIMM), which both gained market share at the company’s expense in the first quarter. Driving their success: Touchscreen phones and app stores, features Nokia has been late and lame to market with. Consider the embarrassing launch this past Monday of its Ovi Store, the company’s challenge to Apple’s App store. Clearly, lots to talk about this session….

Highlights Video

Live Blog

• Shifting gears quickly from the Plastic Logic demo, Walt welcomes Kallasvuo to the stage. First question: You have what share of the world mobile phone market? 35 to 40 percent, replies Kallasvuo.
• Walt: And the devices all these people are using range from low-end devices to devices like the ones Mike Lazaridis was just talking about? Kallasvuo agrees, and notes that he prefers to call the higher-end devices to which Walt refers “mini-computers.”
• Walt: Who are your main rivals? “Three years ago,” says Kallasvuo, “I would not have hesitated to say Motorola.” Obviously, he won’t be saying Motorola (MOT) today. Kallasvuo rattles off a list that includes Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL) and Samsung. “You can compete with some of them some of the time, but not all of the time. So you must partner,” says Kallasvuo, adding that Nokia (NOK) works with Microsoft on email.
• “The cellphone industry is becoming a consumercentric solutions business,” says Kallasvuo. “We are roadmapping now on the basis of solutions and not devices….We are going through a major transformation here and all our operations are being aligned with this change.” A lot of learning must be done there, but there’s also lots of opportunity.
• Talking now about the Symbian OS. Why did Nokia open-source it? Kallasvuo: “We bought it to give it away. And it made Symbian better and faster.” Symbian, says Kallasvuo, is the only mobile OS today that is both open and mature. That’s an advantage when you’re competing against the likes of Apple and Google. If that’s true, asks Walt, why do you have these other operating systems? Kallasvuo admits that Nokia has three mobile OS’s, but says this is necessary to address different sections of the market.”
• Walt: Did you bring a new phone for us to look at? Kallasvuo says yes. He’s brought Nokia’s N97 handheld computer. Walt asks about price and carrier. Kallasvuo: It will initially come to the open channel and will be priced at $699.
• Nokia’s Davis Fields joins Walt and Kallasvuo onstage to demo the device. This is the best handheld Nokia’s ever made, he says. He runs through the specs, which are all impressive: Carl Zeiss lens, etc. Boasts a touchscreen. He moves quickly to the OS, which uses GPS to make the devices runtime applications location-aware. Example: The device’s weather app reveals the current weather in San Diego, the location of this conference. Apps will be available through the OVi store. Core photo application supports MMS and has built-in Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr support. Quick demo of the device’s music features. MP3 player, FM radio, music store, stereo speaker support, built-in FM transmitter, Bluetooth streaming. Everything but the kitchen sink in this thing apparently. Text-to-speech AND speech-to-text available in the email application. 3-D maps and turn-by-turn mapping (thanks to Nokia’s ownership of NavTec).
• Moving on now to the Ovi store, Nokia’s location-aware app store, which launched somewhat problematically earlier this week. Walt asks about those problems and Kallasvuo quickly jumps in to note that they’ve been resolved. “High traffic,” he says. Going over the device’s form factor now, Fields pops open its keyboard. Pulls up AllThingsD on its browser, noting that it browses “the real Internet.” Unlike Safari on the iPhone, it supports Flash. What about video? (This shouted out from the audience.) You can record video and submit it to YouTube, you can download movies from Amazon (AMZN) Unbox. Video chat also supported. Battery life (also shouted from audience). “This holds up very well for all the things you can do with it. It holds up until the end of the day.”
• Walt’s first review of the N97: “That was pretty cool.” Kallasvuo: “I think so too.”
• OK, says Walt. you’ve got this device that looks competitive with the iPhone, but you don’t have a carrier partner in the U.S. What is your problem here? Kallasvuo: “I’ve been working on this one for a long time. A few years ago we began making devices specific to this market.” Nokia’s hope is that these efforts will be recognized and their products and services will be embraced by the local carriers. Kallasvuo recalls AT&T (T) CEO Randall Stephenson’s remark earlier this morning about network quality and device being top consumer concerns. He believes Nokia is in prime position to cater to the latter.
• But Randall and AT&T aren’t carrying this phone. Kallasvuo says the issue here is simple: The device isn’t CDMA. “But I’m working on Randall.”
• On to the Q&A: Could you talk more about your strategy around location? Kallasvuo says location is very important. The company is working to develop more location-based solutions for people. “The phone knows where you are. It might know where you’re going or what you’re going to do.” He says Nokia is looking forward to social location.
• How do you see WiFi and 3G coming together to resolve any potential network bottlenecks in the future? Is there a smooth way to offload traffic from 3G to WiFi? Kallasvuo says the technology is there, but ultimately this will be a carrier solution.
• The final question references the Eve Ensler session and the issue of rape-free phones. Unlike RIM’s Lazaridis, who preceded him, Kallasvuo seems quite knowledgeable about the issue. “We’ve been working on this issue in the Congo since 2001….We are doing everything we can to ensure that we do not use the coltan from the mines in the Congo.” He says Nokia has turned to other suppliers in Australia.
• End of Q&A

A note about our coverage: This liveblog is not an official transcript of the conversation that occurred onstage. Rather, it is a compilation of quotes, paraphrased statements and ad-lib observations written and posted to the Web as quickly as we were able. It was not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090527/olli-pekka-kallasvuo/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090526/ovi-done/ http://allthingsd.com/20090526/ovi-done/#comments Tue, 26 May 2009 14:11:12 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=18288 The Ovi Store, Nokia’s much anticipated response to the wildly popular Apple App Store, debuted this morning–ignominiously by most accounts.

Early criticisms point out the store’s paltry selection, slow performance and sign-in errors, disappearing apps and a less-than-intuitive UI. Nokia blamed the store’s unresponsiveness on unusually high traffic and did its best to address the problem, but even those efforts by its own admission resulted in only “intermittent performance improvements.”

Not the sort of grand opening you hope for when your smartphone market share has been tumbling, largely thanks to the growth of the iPhone and BlackBerry and their respective app stores. Obviously, thin selection and unreliable performance are poor foundations for an online bazaar, especially one so late and so long in coming. Certainly, it makes for a poor comparison to Apple’s App Store, which has already shown up an industry of which it wasn’t even a member a few years ago. As Bengt Nordstrom, chief executive of telecom consultant Northstream, said when Ovi was first announced, “As much as iPhone and App Store is a success for Apple, it’s a humiliating defeat for the rest of the mobile industry. Twenty years of efforts from operators and vendors to create mobile applications that customers like is overtaken in a heartbeat by someone that’s never done it before.”

And now this stumbling launch for Nokia (NOK). Growing pains? I suppose. The Ovi store is being made available to an estimated 50 million Nokia devices globally and it’s enhanced with “social location dynamics” to show you relevant applications and those that your friends have bought, so perhaps early missteps like these are to be expected. Don’t seem to recall Apple (AAPL) or RIM (RIMM) suffering from them, though.

Forrester analyst Thomas Husson says that the success of the Ovi Store depends on, among other things, “the quality of the execution…how easily can the content be accessed, how large is the catalogue of content, how simple is the new merchandizing approach?” Sadly for Nokia, the answers to these questions–at least initially–are not the best.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090526/ovi-done/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090526/ovi-done-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20090526/ovi-done-2/#comments Tue, 26 May 2009 14:11:12 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=18288 The Ovi Store, Nokia’s much anticipated response to the wildly popular Apple App Store, debuted this morning–ignominiously by most accounts.

Early criticisms point out the store’s paltry selection, slow performance and sign-in errors, disappearing apps and a less-than-intuitive UI. Nokia blamed the store’s unresponsiveness on unusually high traffic and did its best to address the problem, but even those efforts by its own admission resulted in only “intermittent performance improvements.”

Not the sort of grand opening you hope for when your smartphone market share has been tumbling, largely thanks to the growth of the iPhone and BlackBerry and their respective app stores. Obviously, thin selection and unreliable performance are poor foundations for an online bazaar, especially one so late and so long in coming. Certainly, it makes for a poor comparison to Apple’s App Store, which has already shown up an industry of which it wasn’t even a member a few years ago. As Bengt Nordstrom, chief executive of telecom consultant Northstream, said when Ovi was first announced, “As much as iPhone and App Store is a success for Apple, it’s a humiliating defeat for the rest of the mobile industry. Twenty years of efforts from operators and vendors to create mobile applications that customers like is overtaken in a heartbeat by someone that’s never done it before.”

And now this stumbling launch for Nokia (NOK). Growing pains? I suppose. The Ovi store is being made available to an estimated 50 million Nokia devices globally and it’s enhanced with “social location dynamics” to show you relevant applications and those that your friends have bought, so perhaps early missteps like these are to be expected. Don’t seem to recall Apple (AAPL) or RIM (RIMM) suffering from them, though.

Forrester analyst Thomas Husson says that the success of the Ovi Store depends on, among other things, “the quality of the execution…how easily can the content be accessed, how large is the catalogue of content, how simple is the new merchandizing approach?” Sadly for Nokia, the answers to these questions–at least initially–are not the best.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090526/ovi-done-2/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090428/verizon-microsoft-working-on-smart-phune/ http://allthingsd.com/20090428/verizon-microsoft-working-on-smart-phune/#comments Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:00:49 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=16557

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090428/verizon-microsoft-working-on-smart-phune/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090428/verizon-microsoft-working-on-smart-phune-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20090428/verizon-microsoft-working-on-smart-phune-2/#comments Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:00:49 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=16557

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090428/verizon-microsoft-working-on-smart-phune-2/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090428/nok%e2%80%8e-nok%e2%80%8e-whos-there-not-you-any-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20090428/nok%e2%80%8e-nok%e2%80%8e-whos-there-not-you-any-more/#comments Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:09:36 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=16504

Nokia, the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, will soon be just a tad smaller. This morning the company said it will sack a further 450 employees in its mobile services business, a division charged with developing and delivering the Ovi-branded Internet services tied to Nokia devices. Seems the still souring economy has undermined Nokia’s (NOK) ambitions in that area, and Apple’s (AAPL) success with the iPhone App Store has inspired it to look to third-party developers to bring new applications to its devices. Said Niklas Savander, Nokia’s executive vice president of services, “The planned changes are aimed at improving and simplifying the user experience of Nokia services, increasing opportunities for third party developers and other partners to create compelling services, and accelerating the development of a common platform for Nokia’s different service offerings.”

In other words, the planned changes are aimed at catching up with Apple. “As much as iPhone and App Store is a success for Apple, it’s a humiliating defeat for the rest of the mobile industry,” Bengt Nordstrom, chief executive of telecom consultant Northstream, told Reuters. “Twenty years of efforts from operators and vendors to create mobile applications that customers like is overtaken in a heartbeat by someone that never done it before.”

Overall, Nokia’s announcement is good news for mobile app developers, bad news for the ones handling them internally at Nokia. It’s not as if we didn’t see this coming, though. The econalypse has been having deleterious effects on Nokia. In January, the company warned that world-wide sales in ’09 are likely to fall 10 percent year-to-year. As CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo put it at the time, “the macro environment is challenging and, we believe, will remain so in 2009.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090428/nok%e2%80%8e-nok%e2%80%8e-whos-there-not-you-any-more/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090428/nok%e2%80%8e-nok%e2%80%8e-whos-there-not-you-any-more-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20090428/nok%e2%80%8e-nok%e2%80%8e-whos-there-not-you-any-more-2/#comments Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:09:36 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=16504

Nokia, the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, will soon be just a tad smaller. This morning the company said it will sack a further 450 employees in its mobile services business, a division charged with developing and delivering the Ovi-branded Internet services tied to Nokia devices. Seems the still souring economy has undermined Nokia’s (NOK) ambitions in that area, and Apple’s (AAPL) success with the iPhone App Store has inspired it to look to third-party developers to bring new applications to its devices. Said Niklas Savander, Nokia’s executive vice president of services, “The planned changes are aimed at improving and simplifying the user experience of Nokia services, increasing opportunities for third party developers and other partners to create compelling services, and accelerating the development of a common platform for Nokia’s different service offerings.”

In other words, the planned changes are aimed at catching up with Apple. “As much as iPhone and App Store is a success for Apple, it’s a humiliating defeat for the rest of the mobile industry,” Bengt Nordstrom, chief executive of telecom consultant Northstream, told Reuters. “Twenty years of efforts from operators and vendors to create mobile applications that customers like is overtaken in a heartbeat by someone that never done it before.”

Overall, Nokia’s announcement is good news for mobile app developers, bad news for the ones handling them internally at Nokia. It’s not as if we didn’t see this coming, though. The econalypse has been having deleterious effects on Nokia. In January, the company warned that world-wide sales in ’09 are likely to fall 10 percent year-to-year. As CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo put it at the time, “the macro environment is challenging and, we believe, will remain so in 2009.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090428/nok%e2%80%8e-nok%e2%80%8e-whos-there-not-you-any-more-2/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090217/gsma-mobile-world-congress-more-like-gsma-iphone-world-congress/ http://allthingsd.com/20090217/gsma-mobile-world-congress-more-like-gsma-iphone-world-congress/#comments Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:20:01 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=13064 “iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone.” Turns out, Apple CEO Steve Jobs was off by about two years when he made that statement in January of 2007. Looking over the announcements coming out of the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, it’s clear that many owe a debt of thanks to Apple (AAPL), whose presence is felt at the event even though it can’t be bothered to attend. Consider the rough approximation of iPhone multitouch navigation in Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.5 OS–now to be known simply as Windows Phone. Or Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Marketplace for Mobile, an over-the-air application bazaar similar to Apple’s App Store.

Also taking inspiration from the App Store: Nokia’s Ovi Store–a location-aware mobile storefront that peddles not just applications, but content as well. “This is not just a place to find applications,” said Nokia executive vice president Niklas Savander. “It’s a smart store. That is not just for smartphones. It actually suggests things you might like and adds social location dynamics to show you relevant applications. And it shows you what your friends have bought. And it changes the inventory based on where you are….Consumers want content that is relevant to their interests, location and the people they care about. We believe that social location is the next wave of consumer demand. The consumption of mobile media is fundamentally different from that on a PC, as it needs to be faster, easier and more appropriate. It’s not about what, but about who, where and when.”

With the “how,” apparently provided by Apple. Because much as Nokia (NOK) would like us to think otherwise, the Ovi Store appears to be little more than Apple’s App Store made location-aware and properly scaled to Nokia’s purposes. Same concept. Same developer revenue share (70 percent).

It would seem then, that the most talked about “innovations” at this year’s GSMA Mobile World Congress–improved touch interfaces, app stores, new content relationships–are little more than rivals’ takes on last year’s Apple news. With the third major revision to the iPhone expected in June, that may well be the case at next year’s Mobile World Congress as well.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090217/gsma-mobile-world-congress-more-like-gsma-iphone-world-congress/feed/ 2