The Ovi-use solution

“Services today, even in the mobile industry, have become such that gadgets are made so that you can put everything inside it,” said William Hamilton Whyte, general manager of Nokia Philippines. “We are at the very beginning of all those services and developing ways to get these services (multimedia, Internet browsing and e-mail) to our consumers — this way they will better understand how to use their cellphones.”

It took long before people started to use these services with their PCs and Macs — services like ordering online or downloading music and videos, even gaming.

But in time the confidence in the confidentiality of the Net developed and people now use the services just like they were going to the mall. 

With cellphones, Whyte acknowledges that there is still a need for consumers to trust that their handsets will make the connections when they want them to. The big news for Nokia cellphone users is that on Jan. 1, 2008 the telecoms giant decided to become an Internet company. This is a big move for the Finnish firm because from now on Nokia is no longer all about just cellphones.

Nokia believes that the future of cellphones lies in its ability to make these gadgets connection-ready, not just for texting and calling, but more so for checking e-mail and keeping in touch with the world through the Net.

Nokia has been a product-centric company over the past decade and they have succeeded in the cellphone industry.

“The outcome of that success is that by mid-2008 we had 1.3-billion Nokia users around the world” said Whyte. 

Because the competition in the cellphone industry has become fiercer, Nokia has opted to move toward the future, today.

One area to make this happen is to make people more mobile and more efficient. In today’s world people need to move fast and have the right information at the right time, all the time.

“I can say that this global crisis will create gainers and losers,” said Whyte. “Nokia, which has several billion cash flow, can only gain from the crisis because when all the stock markets have crashed none of the companies around the world will be able to get loans.”

It is here that Nokia believes it will make a killing, by buying out the smaller Internet companies, thus making its services even more efficient. At the end of the day, it is the cellphone user who will benefit from this move.

What is Ovi

The word “ovi” means “door” in Finnish. The services offered through Ovi were announced in December 2007 and the beta version of desktop software was released last year. As a leading company in the cellphone industry Nokia also believes it can become a leader in mobile Internet services, too.

Ovi will be different because it will bring to cellphone users services that they want while on the go. The idea behind Ovi is very simple — today there are a lot of people with different needs and they all use their phones for different reasons. The purpose of Ovi is to be able to provide to all Nokia users around the world the ability to access information, look at what they want, whether that’s music or games or maps and then following their needs and requirements, download the applications.

“We want to ensure that people have access to the Internet on their cellphones,” added Whyte. “Our vision is for Ovi to bring together people, places, time and things through interconnected services that adjust to the world around you for an enriched and personalized experience.”