NokiaWorld 2007: Nokia Keynote and Ovi Thoughts
Ewan's thoughts on this morning's Nokia World keynote...
About halfway through this morning’s keynote at Nokia World in Amsterdam, Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo managed to sum up the Finnish company’s view of the future in one short phrase. "Accelerating Renaissance". From the seeds that were visibly planted at the September 'Go:Play' event, the growing saplings were fully on display. Nokia’s continued evolution from a handset manufacturer that does some software, to a Software and Services company that supplements the handset division, looks to be healthy and growing.
What Nokia is attempting to do is second guess the changes that the convergence of mobility and internet access will bring to the industry, and make sure that they have everything in place to be the leading innovator over the next five years. To that end, they are placing Ovi ("It’s not a portal", they stressed from the stage) at the heart of a connected strategy to encompass social networks, location and contextually aware devices, with user-generated content and mass multimedia, messaging, communication and productivity.
And the message of that approach was both reinforced and expanded on in today’s keynote session.
While the numbers rather dryly back up the future view of Nokia (50 million Nseries devices in circulation, 31% of connections are made over Wi-Fi, 37% of mobile usage is for messaging and only 12% for voice calls), what was more intriguing is where Ovi, and therefore the cutting edge of Nokia, is going during 2008.
Nokia Maps is already established in the suite of applications, and the recently launched Music Store forms part of the 'music suite', which is going to being built upon – currently 1 in 5 Nokia (compatible) smartphone users are registered with the store, and of those, around 25% have downloaded a track to the handset. Of course there’s no breakdown on how many of those are the free tracks of the week, but the fact that a high percentage know this is possible and are making use of the service is promising.
Buried quietly within the talk was the announcement of Nokia’s "Comes With Music" subscription service. With launch partners Universal Music Group, this is a yearly subscription for downloadable (not streamed) music that does not ‘time out’ at the end of the year. I.e. you download it, it’s yours, forever (on that device). It also appears the subscription is factored into the cost of the handset! This has huge implications across multiple industries, and I’m going to take some time to write my thoughts on that later.
The next Ovi component to launch is the slightly delayed (you make it sound like a train!... - Ed) N-Gage gaming service, due before the end of 2007. This will be followed by the web-based portion of Ovi. This is currently undergoing internal testing inside Espoo, and should be open for beta testers at the start of the year (which I read as late Q1 2008). This looks remarkably like other online social services, with bookmarks, friend lists, links out to other services, bringing in media streams such as Flickr and YouTube, but the consistency with the devices could bring this service the edge it needs.
The final element, Ovi PC, to all intents looks like a massive update to the Nokia Lifeblog PC (archive and exploration) tool. Alongside screenshots of the Ovi web site, the 3D representation of your media looked incredibly like an operating system from Japanese anime, but of course we’re not going to see that in the wild for some time yet.
Can the sum of the parts be greater than the whole? Will Ovi be a success for Nokia? The management team certainly think so, and the new ideas presented here, on top of the increased detail about earlier Ovi product announcements, certainly has me confident Nokia can deliver their end of the argument. Whether the rest of the Web 2.0 world will follow remains to be seen, but this is one of the most joined up presentations I’ve seen in a long time.
Ewan Spence, AllAboutSymbian Dec 2007
Published by Ewan Spence at 11:53 UTC, December 4th 2007
Categories: Comment
Platforms: General, N-Gage, S60 3rd Edition
Feature Discussion
I still think Nokia needs to take a long hard look at the complexity of its handset line (model proliferation is rampant and unhelpful). For example, it needs to better align the N and E series devices such that the form factors aren't excluding the user from an entire sub-set of hardware capability (e.g., try typing an email on an N95 or playing video on an E90 - you can but it's generally not worth the effort).
If Nokia can streamline its handsets and align with the various OVI components, they could have a real winner here. If they can't I suspect the proposition will remain bewilderingly complex for the average user (and therefore largely ignored: after all, even these figures posit a small minority of users employing the full capability of their devices) and frustrating for the advanced user who wants a universal device.
It's Apples one real long-term advantage (brand aside, the interface will be copied soon enough) - it's a simple offering. One handset, one set of capabilities open to all users.
The Truth is people want one device that looks like a phone and is as good at playing games as sending emails or playing music. The fact is, people have multiple choices, a business executive woudn't wanna be caught looking like gaming freak or a music maniac because of his device but that doesn't mean he wouldn't want to enjoy Call of Duty (lol) or a teenager may not want to carry a blackberry lookalike but it doesn't mean he doesn't want to catch up on his emails on time.
[quote=Richard Ross;351532]It's Apples one real long-term advantage (brand aside, the interface will be copied soon enough) - it's a simple offering. One handset, one set of capabilities open to all users. [/quote]
I have my own reservations about using the word 'OPEN' anywhere near a device that has apple written on it.
Iphone is monstrously expensive and not anywhere near the hype but at least as these things go its a simple consumer proporisiotn.
As for the business exec not wanting a music phone - I'm sitting in a giant, tedious, grey corporate tower that houses one of the largest companies in the world and most of our execs are quite happy with their Moto Razr's or 6500s and separate Blackberry's. I don't think the problem is exec's not wanting to be seen with an entertainment device - it's that they don't have a choice if they want to converge voice and messaging effectively.
And finally, on video on E90 - yeah, it works and it works OK (not if you want full screen) but it's hardly as easy to hit play as it is on a N95.
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