The Challenges Facing Nokia Ovi
By Rico, 12:12 pm Sat May 24 2008 - Analysis - 1 Opinion
Last Thursday, we sat down with Nokia Philippines’ General Manager William Hamilton-Whyte, Head of Product Marketing Rhomel Marcojos, and Manager for Corporate Communications Nikka Abes over a dinner at Sugi in Greenbelt 2. They talked about Nokia’s plans for the future, specifically focusing on the Ovi initiative.
What is Ovi?
Ovi centers around three internet services. The Nokia Music Store (NMS) aims to provide audiophiles with a wide selection of music that they can download onto their phone or PC for a fee. The N-Gage platform is the successor to Nokia’s failed attempt to make a dent on the increasingly lucrative mobile gaming market. Nokia Maps promises to make maps “for more than 200 countries” available for download for use on GPS-enabled phones.
Despite being publicized last August 2007, Ovi has yet to be fully implemented, a fact that Mr. Whyte was forthcoming about during our dinner (Nokia Philippines paid for everything). The talk was more a discussion of future plans than a demo of existing services.
What Ovi Needs to Overcome
Ovi is Nokia’s attempt to remain relevant to cell phone buyers for the foreseeable future, by providing a set of value-added services and create new incentives to buy a Nokia phone. It is clear that Ovi’s successful implementation requires dealing with certain challenges, common to companies trying to expand into new areas.
Most notable of these challenges is the existence of established players in the music and mobile gaming industries. The NMS will need to provide a better level of convenience than Apple’s widely popular iTunes music store. The new N-Gage needs to once again win gamers and developers away from competing (and popular) gaming platforms. Nokia Maps has to contend with competitors who already provide GPS solutions.
On top of that, Nokia will also have to convince customers that it’s worth paying for Ovi services.
What Nokia Will Do
Nokia will have to make the new services as convenient and affordable as possible, so that customers will have no issues downloading and using them on their phones. As the #1 phone maker in the world, the company already has the technological know-how to make it work.
It wasn’t clear what Nokia would change to make the new incarnation of N-Gage to work, but there were definite plans for the musical and maps aspects of Ovi. Certain models will be marketed with the “Comes With Music” tagline, which represents a year’s worth of free downloads from the NMS (Nokia Philippines currently has agreements with Universal and Sony-BMG). Nokia also currently maintains the Independent Artists Club, and plans to have “50% of its portfolio” GPS-capable by 2012, in line with its belief that “maps and GPS will become a commodity”.
At the very least, the Nokia executives showed a willingness to discuss and explore new ideas, taking suggestions and questions from Technograph and the other tech bloggers/journalists who were at the dinner. If such openness is common throughout Nokia, then the company has a better chance of tackling future challenges.
Eugene
12:12 am Wed Jun 4 2008
Posted my own analysis: http://vaes9.codedgraphic.com/posts/bloggers_with_nokia_phils