Nokia looks beyond hardware

Nokia's launch of the Ovi mobile Internet services portal has prompted questions such as “Will Nokia kill the service provider?” from IMS Research, and statements such as “Nokia is placing a very large bet in a very high-profile way” from Ovum.

Ovi — which brings together Nokia's new gaming portal; music store; and a slew of mapping, social networking and other applications — certainly isn't Nokia's first service to raise hackles in the industry. Club Nokia competed with operators for ringtone sales, and the Preminet platform prompted questions about whether Nokia was embedding itself too far in the wireless value chain. But Ovi is its most ambitious initiative yet, indicative of Nokia's plans to maintain its customer relationship long after the handset sale.

Andrew Elliott, head of multimedia experiences in North America for Nokia, said the company is taking responsibility for knitting together the complex and fragmented realm of mobile data services.

The question is whether carriers are capable of doing the same job themselves and whether they'll retaliate if Nokia invades their turf. Any U.S. battle will have to wait; Ovi is only launching in Asia and Europe. But the U.S. is definitely on Nokia's radar, Elliott said. “We're a global company,” he said. “When we do things, they are designed to be launched on a global scale.”

Nokia's Ovi isn't just a single service, but multiple storefronts and applications wrapped into a single portal:

THE OVI MUSIC STORE — Using technology from its acquisition Loudeye, Nokia will launch a music store for both online and over-the-air music downloads and streaming.

N-GAGE GAMING STORE — Nokia has turned the N-Gage from a device into a gaming platform capable of working on later-generation Series 60 devices. It plans to sell N-Gage games to a much broader segment.

OVI.COM — Initially the Web and mobile portal will contain existing services like Nokia's new maps and navigation features, but Nokia is emphasizing the potential of the portal for all types of Web services.