Ovi means “door” in Finnish, and is Nokia’s services bet for mobile social media sharing. These are a few of my thoughts on it’s rise and fall, and possible morph of the service into something new (and probably better?).
In the heyday of Web2.0 and during the rise of iPhone as the new standard of a mobile web experience, many phone manufactures sought to build, buy or bolt-on apps and services that enabled social media and content sharing. These services help enable experiences beyond the device. This may seem elementary for those coming from the Web2.0 world, but the world of device manufacturing is a little slower to move on big software and services bets. Well, Nokia’s goal is to bring in functionally that is habit forming for users on the web/PC, but now extending this experience to mobile. Some network operators formed closed partnerships, some handset manufacturers wrote 2nd party API’s to access various social networks, and some bought or built their OWN branded services. Like Nokia.
However aspirational it is, I’ve always admired their desire to become an internet services company, always aware of where the industry is being commodittized, and seeking differentiation by moving one notch up the proverbial value chain. There was a lot of analysis written about this step being a natural progression of their business at the time, in some ways a re-try of their “Club Nokia” strategy a few years earlier. And they have a lot of money to try it. They bought NAVTEQ for location based service integration. They were taking control of their own destiny in the brave new services-oriented world — all very admirable strategies!
Well, sometimes actual user preferences can throw a wrench in those kind of plans. Nokia created their own social network and sharing properties on the web, highly integrated with their device software. Even normally restrictive network operators (notably Vodafone and T-Mobile) agreed to work with Ovi, which is a tremendous accomplishment just by itself. One small problem: user’s already have in mind where they want to do their social networking, mapping, and media sharing: the same places they all their friends already do (Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Picasa, Google/Yahoo Maps, Photobucket, and wherever else they are free to choose.)
Users did not rushing to play in Nokia’s own branded sandbox, and shop only from their Nokia music store and Nokia game store – at least not in the US market. It was a business goal that didn’t have enough overlap with existing (or even desired) user behavior. Yes, media-savvy youth using mobile devices love to share content and comment on their friends. But at different destinations. So it’s a logical conclusion that Nokia will be re-thinking what Ovi becomes in the future, and seems to be taking a pause to figure it out:
Reuters: Nokia halts investment in media-sharing site:
Halts future development into own sharing service to focus on integrating other services. Nokia built the service — seen as one of the cornerstones of its services strategy — on the acquisition of U.S. firm Twango in 2007. “It seems like an admission of failure — which is healthy at this point,” said GC Research analyst Tero Kuittinen. [...] “They definitely need to collaborate with Facebook instead of trying to replace it. Same thing with Twitter and Flickr,” Kuittinen said.
Engadget: Nokia responds to Ovi Share rumors, service effectively on ice.
Nokia’s preferring to drop time, energy, and cash into building out its third-party APIs that allow more established sharing services to plug into Ovi rather than trying to pimp its own service; makes sense, really, since there are plenty already in the game and there’s not much sense in Nokia trying to win. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, as they say.
As Ovi realizes the need to (re)align more to mass-adoption user goals, they’ll see that playing and integrating well with other services, and playing it more open, will likey yield far better results: add the connective value, not just the endpoint. Nokia has spent huge sums to build awareness for the Ovi brand, it’s unlikely they’ll just shutter it. The design and build team (and I do believe they are talented - the site is well designed, simple to use) can carry forward in a more universal direction aligned with the ultimate judge of a new service: the end user.
nokia has been made to pay for its risks ….its probabaly time to rethink its marketing stratergies. Indeed, the example of the famous “N-gage” strokes our mind and could be linked with the word “failure”. The N-gage began as a concept when nokia noticed that more gamers were carrying a Nintendo Game Boy and cell phone simultaneously.
In order to argue why the giant mobile phone manufacturer failed to produce a multi-purpose device -encompassing the portable gaming-console and the phone’s function- has failed, we decided to contrast it with the success of the mobile phone called the “N-70″. The nokia N-series such as the N-70 model has greatly contributed to the success lately…will this do any better for NOKIA?