The Nokia OVI Overview

Nokia announced OVI yesterday during the Go Play! launch. With the expansion of their core business from mobile devices to services and applications, here’s an overview of the Nokia OVI roadmap.

OVI is a unification of Nokia’s Internet services which covers music, games and maps, among others. A new user interface will be rolled out on new mobile phones in which OVI will be slowly integrated in the next 12 months. Ovi.com is schedule to go live in Q4 of 2007.

OVI will integrate your mobile phone with lots of social networking websites – Digg, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twittr, Google, Yahoo!, iLike, Dopplr and MySpace so you can access and enjoy all these sites from your mobile phone. Nokia intends to make the OVI platform open to 3rd-party developers.

Nokia Music Store

Nokia has partnered with the 4 major record labels to distribute music (http://music.nokia.com) to your PC and your mobile phone and sync them seamlessly. You can also download the music directly into your Nokia phone as well as favorite/bookmark it if you want to download later. The music service will include downloads with tracks costing €1 each and an entire album at €10 plus a monthly subscription fee of €10 for streaming service.

You can play songs purchased (Windows DRM) on the follwing devices: Nokia 5310, Nokia 5610, Nokia 5700, Nokia 6267, Nokia 6500, Nokia 6555, Nokia 7500/7900, Nokia N75, N76, N81/8GB, N91, N95/8GB. DRM covers unlimited DC burning, unlimited playing on the PC and the phone and up to 10 times download to the PC and once on the portable.

Payments will primarily be done via credit card, Paypal, pre-paid vouchers or OTA charges by the respective telco. A PC Music Client client will also be rolled out later and integrated in the Nokia PC Suite. The service will be available in Europe in Q4 of 2007 and in 2008 for the rest of Asia.

Nokia Maps

Nokia built its own maps of over 100 countries for the handset. There are also city guides you can purchase and download specific to your locality so you can use your phone as a personal navigation device.

Specific devices with GPS capability were also introduced — Nokia Wireless GPS Module LD-4W, LD-3W and LD-2. There’s also the Nokia 500 Auto Navigation and the Nokia 330 with 3.5″ full screen touchscreen display.

Nokia N-Gage

Nokia rebuilt its gaming service from being a single device to a gaming platform. It has partnered with CapCom, Digital Chocolate, EA Mobile, IndiaGames, I-Play, GameLoft, THQ Wireless and Vivendi Games Mobile to provide hundreds of downloadable games to any of the following N-Series phones — Nokia N73, N81, N93, and N95.

Popular games would include The Sims Pets, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, EA Sports FIFA 08, World Rally Championship and Crash Bandicoot. Dowloadable directly from the web or Over-the-Air, you can play the trial versions before buying them. Games will cost somewhere between €4 to €10.

As for that iPhone-like device being shown on the video presentations, I don’t think its a real phone but could be a hint for future UI roadmaps. Will have to find out later during the Press Meeting.