- 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. Nokia focuses on five key service areas: Games, Maps, Media, Messaging and Music. Nokia's aim with Ovi is to include third party developers, 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 July/August 2011, there were exactly 10.0million downloads every day, also 158 developers reached over 1 million downloads for their Applications. On May 16, 2011, Nokia announced that the Ovi brand will be discontinued and the services rebranded under the main Nokia brand. The transition will begin in July 2011 and Nokia said it intends to complete the rebranding of the Ovi services by the end of 2012.
· History
- Ovi was announced on August 29, 2007 at the Go Play event in London. The word "ovi" means "door" in Finnish. The public beta was released on August 28, 2008.
- Nokia has acquired key building blocks for Ovi over time. These include intellectual property (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 3.3.86. A Mac OS X compatible version was announced in November 2008, and has been "expected soon" ever since. Instead, Nokia phones can connect with Mac computers via Apple's iSync application.
- Ovi Sync
- Ovi Sync allows the synchronization of contact and calendar data between Nokia Symbian phones and the Nokia Ovi data center. Synchronization is initiated on the phone and is bidirectional.
- Ovi Contacts
- Ovi Contacts is the address book section of ovi.com and allows contact information to be viewed and modified. Nokia has announced on the Ovi website that web access to contact information will be discontinued on January 25th, 2012. However, Nokia is stating that Ovi Sync will function after this date, allowing Nokia Symbian phone users to continue to transfer phone contact data to and from Nokia data center servers. As a result of the discontinuation of web access to the contact data as well as their transition to Windows Phone 7 devices that synchronize data with Microsoft Hotmail, in late 2011 Nokia added the capability to download all Ovi Contacts information in CSV format for importation into another online contact provider. Nokia has stated that this download capability will remain via URL contactsui.ovi.com even after web access to contact data has ended.
