As the world's leading phone maker, Nokia is now moving forward to go beyond cell phones and jump into the Internet services bandwagon. The Finnish phone manufacturer realized that they couldn't rely on handsets anymore, but should start to be an Internet company by offering content, solution and services.

The idea is pretty simple. It's impossible to announce new handsets every day, but they - by working closely with the developers, content providers and partners - could offer a bunch of new applications, contents and services every single day.

Nokia first unveiled the ambitious plan two years ago, marking that it will compete more directly with Google, Apple and Microsoft. The plan centers on Ovi, the company's new Internet services brand name. The Nokia's "umbrella concept" Internet service enables consumers to access their existing social network, blogs, contents and communities from a single location. Ovi is the Finnish word for "door," meaning that Nokia doors to the Web.

According to Nokia president and chief executive officer Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Ovi represents Nokia's vision in combining the Internet and mobility, as the number one mobile device company in the world. "Looking into the future, we will deliver great devices, combined with compelling experiences and services, to make it easy for people to unlock the potential of the Internet."

Along with several journalists from Indonesia, I was invited to attend the Nokia Connection 2009 recently in the Convention Center, Raffles City, Singapore. At the event, Nokia announced a number of devices (including the Nokia N97, Nokia 5530 XpressMusic and Nokia 3710 fold) with solutions that can be personalized.

Here is Nokia's latest strategy in dealing with the recent market: (1) offering new devices with new services; (2) delivering new devices with old services; and (3) promoting old devices with new services. You can determine any Nokia handset that launched should be related to one of these strategies.

In a keynote address at the opening ceremony of the event, executive vice president and chief development officer Mary McDowell revealed that the Asia Pacific market has been an extremely important region for Nokia over the years and remains hugely important to Nokia. Indonesia, according to McDowell, has been surprisingly becoming the most popular country in the world using Ovi Mail, the company's new email service.

"The next phase of growth will be very much driven by the emerging markets, including Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Vietnam," said Chris Carr, vice president of sales in SEAP region.

Let's take a look at have a number Ovi services that already launched:

Share on Ovi

Share on Ovi (http://share.ovi.com) is a media-sharing website, allowing the upload and storage of photos, videos etc. Users can upload media direct from their Nokia mobile phone through the share online 3.0 application or can alternately use their PC. (However, according to Reuters, Nokia will halt investment in this service as part of a revamp of its services strategy. But Nokia will keep the service up and running.)

Ovi Mail

Ovi Mail is growing fast. Ovi Mail (http://mail.ovi.com) is free email that you can use directly from your Nokia mobile phone and on the Web. Currently more than 35 different phone models with S40 and S60-platform support Ovi Mail's beta version. According to its website, Ovi Mail is a leading mobile email service in Indonesia, South Africa, the Philippines, Mexico, Brazil and India.

Ovi Maps

As the next step in its social location journey, Nokia has released the latest version of its mobile mapping and navigation service, Nokia Maps (http://maps.ovi.com).

The combination of Nokia Maps and Ovi allows people to pre-plan their journey at home on their PC and synchronize with their mobile. Maps has been updated to include a number of new features such as high-resolution aerial images and 3D landmarks for 216 cities and terrain maps.

Ovi Store

Since May 26, 2009, Ovi Store has been available globally to an estimated 50 million Nokia device owners across more than 50 Nokia devices including the new flagship device, the Nokia N97. Offering a range of content including applications, games, videos, widgets, pod-casts, location-based applications and personalized content, Ovi Store (http://store.ovi.com) will be available on S60 and Series 40 devices.

Ovi Store has paid and free content from a range of global and local content providers and developers. Currently, customers from select countries - including Indonesia - can only buy online from the Ovi store. (Please take note that so far all Ovi Store applications and contents are still free for Indonesian users -so hurry up! I already downloaded several apps from Ovi Store into my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. My only note is that Nokia should list any compatible handset on each application's description so that I don't download incompatible applications into my device).

The digital store supports operator billing in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Singapore, Spain and the United Kingdom. Globally, credit card billing is available through the mobile application and the mobile website.

According to the Nokia Conversations blog, by 2012 an estimated 300 millions users worldwide will have access to Ovi Store. Chris Carr told me that Forum Nokia works closely with more than 4 million developers to develop applications in order to make the new service stays competitive.

The Finnish cell phone maker's direct rivals in this field are Apple's iPhone App Store, RIM's BlackBerry App World, Google Android's App Store, Palm Pre's App Catalog and Microsoft's Mobile Marketplace. However, as the world's largest manufacturer of mobile phones, Nokia has a big opportunity to offer any service to the fans of their various mobile devices.

The writer is a blogger and can be reached at bp@budiputra.com

Popular

To my horror, it’s just a movie!

RI, Australia strengthen partnership on taxing crypto assets

Pentagon chief congratulates Prabowo on being elected President