News from Nokia World, Barcelona
Nokia has used its Nokia World event, being held in Barcelona, to launch its Maps on Ovi and Mail on Ovi services. Both services extend its service capability within Ovi, and represent Nokia’s latest attempt to tie desktop usage to mobile. The services take the vendor into a head-on fight with Google and other web-based service providers for mapping, navigation and messaging services, as well as extending Nokia’s competitiveness with mobile operators keen to do the same.
But there was also word from Nokia that it is looking for operators to support its Nokia Messaging service.
The vendor has also released details of the N97 – its new phone, as well as saying it will complete its acquisition of Symbian today.
Maps
Nokia says the combination of Nokia Maps plus Ovi is the first free service that allows people to synchronise PC mapping with their mobile. It has also enhanced the Nokia Maps service to include high-resolution aerial images, 3D landmarks for 216 cities and terrain maps, as well as a new route overview within Drive, its paid-for navigation service.
Nokia says that by adding the Ovi element to the handset application, it will attract users of other online mapping services (ie Google) because only Nokia offers the synchronised service between PC and mobile.
Michael Halbherr, vice-president, Nokia location based experiences, said, "Enabling Nokia Maps the ability to synchronize my favorite places between my mobile and PC. becomes the main reason for anyone to switch from other personal navigation devices to Nokia Maps."
The new version of the Nokia Maps application for selected devices is available at http://www.nokia.com/betalabs. The online version will be accessible from http://maps.ovi.com. As both versions are released as a Beta, some product features may not be available in the Beta release, but instead, will be added into future releases.
Messaging
Nokia has taken a similar line here, integrating PC-based webmail services within Ovi with Nokia Messaging for mobile by launching Nokia messaging along with Mail on Ovi.
Nokia Messaging mobilises consumer email services for users of most Nokia phones and webmail services, the company says. But IM is not set to be enabled until the second half of 2009.
Interestingly, Nokia also hopes to have the service supported by operators so that data plans will include Nokia Messaging – without the operators making any additional service charges for mobile email or IM access
For some operators, this will not be attractive, as it risks driving users away from the operators’ “own” communities. But for others the attraction will be the Nokia Messaging, if it works as easily as Nokia is saying, will drive consumer adoption of data tariffs.
Nokia Messaging will launch commercially in the first quarter of 2009 in Australia, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom and Venezuela, and in select countries later in the year.
The Nokia Messaging push email service is available today for free as a limited-period beta trial. Owners of popular Nokia S60 devices such as Nokia E71 and Nokia N95 can immediately go to email.nokia.com and install the service on their devices.
Instant messaging and support for Nokia Series 40 devices will be enabled in the second half of 2009.