Nokia "Ovi" Web Services Gambit: Where Apple Fears to Tread
Nokia's other big announcement today besides new phones is their new "Ovi" web services platform, which aims to bridge some of the more popular Web 2.0 services like MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook—and an all new music downloads store—with the Series 60 smartphone OS. (And the phones that run on that platform, of course. And your eyes and ears. And your brain. Oh, and then your wallet.)
Nokia has taken a crack at web services integration on their handsets before—their "Lifeblog" service was actually very forward thinking, but they never did much with it—so it's good to see them approach the idea again. Most promising, Ovi is built around the idea of bridging content and communities of which you're already part into Nokia phones, something that Apple, despite the wonderful hardware and software of the iPhone, seems reticent to tuck into. (Apple has so far only dipped their toe into web integration with .Mac services; considering Apple's web service is one of the weakest parts of the Apple experience, even greater integration into .Mac is hardly tantalizing.)
Ovi (Finnish for "door") also includes a new music store—complete with Windows Media-based DRM—that will allow for over-the-air downloads, currently priced at 1 Euro a song and 10 Euro-a-month all-you-can-eat subscriptions that will work on your PC. (It's not entirely clear if you'll be able to download songs to your PC on the all-you-can-eat and also sync them to your Ovi-compatible phone. The verbiage I'm seeing is "streaming," so it seems unlikely.)
And remember N-Gage, Nokia's actually-not-that-bad gaming platform that was hampered by ridiculous gaming handset design? Since the N-Gage games weren't as hardware intensive as, say, Nintendo DS or Sony PSP games, they'll run just fine on modern Nokia handsets. Ovi will allow you to download old N-Gage titles for play, including new games that are in the pipe from Capcom and EA.
The proof is in the user experience pudding (gross!), so here's hoping your appetite for Ovi will remain whetted until it's launched late this year.
Official Page [Ovi.Nokia.com]
Press Release [Nokia.com]
More coverage: Crave.CNET.com; CrunchGear; GigaOm; Gizmodo; Engadget
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Though the Apple iphone isn't taking action on its own to tap into community websites. You can see that the community sites are reacting accordingly. According to a laughing squid blog, facebook has a seperate url website that is to be used with the iphone. I am not sure if myspace or others are on this but I am sure you will see more as the iphone drops price and becomes more main stream.