Nokia's Ovi

Ovi by Nokia is the brand for Nokia's Internet services. The Ovi services can be used from a mobile device, computer (through Nokia Ovi Suite) or via the web (Ovi.com). Nokia focuses on five key services areas: Games, Maps, Media, Messaging and Music. Nokia's aim with Ovi is to include 3rd parties, such as operators and third-party services like Yahoo's Flickr photo site. With the announcement of Ovi Maps Player API, Nokia has started to evolve their services into a platform, enabling third-parties to make use of Nokia's Ovi services. It has some significance in that Nokia is moving deeper into the world of Internet services, where head-on competition with Microsoft, Google and Apple is inevitable. Ovi is the Finnish word for "door". As of 28 February 2010 there were almost 1.5 million downloads every day

History

Ovi was announced on August 29, 2007 at the Go Play event in London. The word "ovi" means "door" in Finnish. On December 4, a more ambitious plan was announced with more details about when public beta desktop software would be offered. The public beta was released on August 28, 2008.
Nokia over time has acquired key building blocks for Ovi. This includes IP, patents and core components such as synchronization. Acquired IP, patents include companies such as Starfish Software, Intellisync, NAVTEQ, Gate5, Plazes and others. Other components have been developed internally.
On May 20, 2009, at the Where 2.0 event in San Jose, CA, USA, Nokia announced the release of the Ovi Maps Player API, allowing web developers to embed Ovi Maps into a website using JavaScript.

 Services

Nokia Ovi Suite

Nokia Ovi Suite allows Nokia mobile users to organize and share their photos and PIM data between their PC and their handset. It is the next generation of Nokia PC Suite and eventually Nokia Ovi Suite will become the only computer application offered by Nokia. The current commercial version of Nokia Ovi Suite is 2.1.1.1. A Mac OS X compatible version was announced in November 2008, and has been "expected soon" ever since. No updates on this announcement have been made available to date.

Ovi Sync

Ovi Sync allows you to sync your contacts, calendar events and notes to ovi.com. The service can be used as a way to backup your data or to edit it in your computer to then send it back to your phone. There is no auto-sync yet.

Ovi Store

The Ovi Store was launched world wide in May 2009. Here, customers can download mobile games, applications, videos, images, and ringing tones to their Nokia devices. Some of the items are free of charge; others can be purchased using credit card or through operator billing in selected operators. The content in Ovi Store is sorted into the following categories:

• Recommended
• Games
• Personalise
• Applications
• Audio & video

Ovi Store is intended to offer customers content that is compatible with their mobile devices and relevant to their tastes and locations. Customers can share recommendations with their friends, see what they are downloading, and let them see items of interest.
For content publishers, Nokia offers a self-service tool to bring their content to the Ovi Store. Supported content types include: Java ME, Flash applications, widgets, ringtones, wallpapers, themes, and more for Nokia Series 40 and S60 devices. Nokia offers a 70% revenue share of gross sales, net of refunds and returns, less applicable taxes and, where applicable, fixed operator billing costs.
Ovi Store replaces the older Nokia services, Widsets, Download!, and MOSH.

Ovi Maps

With the Ovi Maps internet service, customers can browse places from all over the world, plan trips, search for addresses and points of interest, and save them on Ovi. Ovi Maps for web can be used on any browser and any operating system for PC or Mac. To install the Ovi Maps plug-in that enables more features, one needs to have either Microsoft Windows XP/Vista with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and later or Mozilla Firefox 3 or later, or Apple Mac OS X with Safari 3 and later.
If the Ovi Maps 3.0 application (formerly known as Nokia Maps) is installed to your compatible Nokia mobile device, you can synchronise places, collections, and routes between Ovi Maps and your mobile device. You need to have a Nokia account to be able to synchronise.
Using Nokia Ovi Suite or Nokia Map Loader on Microsoft Windows XP or Vista, users can download and preload map data and navigator voices to their mobile device. This allows customers to save time and money as little data is required to be downloaded over-the-air during operation. Map data can also be downloaded without Nokia Ovi Suite or Nokia Map Loader by pointing a web browser to the map file locations.

Ovi Mail

Ovi Mail is an easy-to-use email address designed for access from your Nokia mobile device and can also be accessed from compatible desktop browsers. The beta phase started on December 2008, and is also available for all Ovi users from 20th of February 2009.
The web mail works with standard browsers such as IE 6, IE 7, Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 and is currently available in 15 languages - US English, UK English, Indonesian, Malay, Bengali, Filipino (Tagalog), French, German, Hindi, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal) and Spanish (Spain).
Currently over 35 different phone models with S40 and S60 -platform support Nokias new mail service. According to its website Ovi Mail is a leading mobile email service in Indonesia, South Africa, the Philippines, Mexico, Brazil and India. On August 11, 2009 Nokia announced that in just over six months over 650,000 accounts were created on mobile devices and over one million accounts were activated in total. On January 8th 2010, it was announced by Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo that the Ovi Mail service had 5 million users.

Instant Messaging

Newer Nokia phones also ship with software that allows to do instant messaging (IM). Apart from using accounts with other popular IM service providers (e.g., for the ICQ network), a user may also use his Ovi account to send and receive instant messages to and from other Ovi users. Depending on the user's tariffs for sending SMS text messages vs. connecting to the Internet from the mobile phone, using instant messaging can prove to be either significantly cheaper (volume-based data plan) or significantly more expensive (time-based data plan).

Ovi Share

Ovi Share is a media sharing website. Originally called Twango, the site allows the upload and storage of photos, videos, etc. Users can upload media directly from Nokia mobile phones through the Share Online 3.0 application, or can alternatively use their PCs.

Ovi Files

Ovi Files allows users to remotely access, send, and create an online mirror of files stored on their Windows PC and Macintosh computers from any mobile or computer web browser. Supplemental features enable users to upload content to their remote computer and preview Microsoft Office and Adobe PDF documents without the need for a browser plug-in or locally installed application.
Ovi Files is based on the "Access and Share" service created by Avvenu Incorporated, which Nokia acquired  in 05 December 2007.
Originally a premium service, Ovi Files was made free of charge in July 2009.

Nokia Music Store

Nokia Music Store allows purchasing of music directly on a mobile device or via PC. Download of Nokia Music software for PC is available from http://music.nokia.com/download
The store is currently available in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom with more countries launching regularly.
When you buy a Nokia Comes With Music device, you get unlimited free music downloads from millions of tracks from the Nokia Music Store for your PC & Mobile. Yours to keep even after your subscription ends.
Nokia Comes With Music is currently available in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Finland, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, the United Kingdom, and South Africa.

Ovi Player

Nokia Ovi Player, previously known as Nokia Music PC Client, is the music management and playback software for PC. Nokia Ovi Player is required for accessing Nokia Music Stores and Nokia Comes With Music service. Download of Nokia Ovi Player is available from http://music.nokia.com/download.
Nokia Ovi Player allows user to download tracks from the music stores and provides easy transfer of tracks to supported Phones and MP3 Players. Nokia Ovi Player supports Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) and will be able to transfer audio tracks to any phones or MP3 players supporting MTP over standard USB.

N-Gage

The N-Gage 2.0 platform has been integrated into the Nokia N78, Nokia N79, Nokia N81, Nokia N81 8GB, Nokia N82, Nokia N85, Nokia N86, Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia N96 and Nokia 5320 mobile phones. Early in 2008, an updated version of the mobile gaming platform (including its online component - the N-Gage Arena) went live, according to Nokia. The service worked in the past only with Nokia's N-Gage mobile game consoles, but the company said it will soon work with other devices too.

Publishing content

Publishers of content, or Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), may join the Ovi programme for a fee of €50. Nokia keeps 30% of the developers' revenue from sales of their product. However, if the product is purchased using Operator Billing, then between 40%-50% of the price paid by the consumer is first given to the operator. Content which the publisher develops will be reviewed by Nokia before publication. Symbian, Java and Flash lite applications must be Symbian signed. Symbian Signed is the signing programme administered by the Symbian Foundation. It requires a Publisher ID which costs $200 per year and each time you sign a SIS file it will cost €10 when using Express Signed.