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Why Ovi Is Important To Nokia?
(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)
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When you have a 60% market share of a rapidly increasing mobile handset market in India, what else can you ask for? Well, more. And for Nokia that’s the Mobile VAS, another rapidly growing market. In India.
It was almost one year back, when Nokia announced. Described as an integrated services platform Ovi was a platform to offer multimedia rich and other content to the mobile handsets. Contents ranged from video clips, to mobisodes, to short animations, ringtones, music and even Maps (Nokia Maps). One year later, Nokia is close to launching its Ovi platform. It has been working to integrate all of its Mobile VAS offering under the Ovi platform.
So, Whats Happening ?
Well, Nokia already had something called Nokia Downloads. Now Nokai is integrating the services under the Ovi brand name. Also, Nokia is now planning to offer mobisodes. They have partnered with Hungama for the same. They have planned to offer mobisodes in areas like children’s program, news, sports, music clips and other entertainment programmes like soaps, reality TV shows, etc. Nokia has tied up with Hungama Mobile to offer mobisodes of “Afterworld” and “Kahani Hamari Mahabharat Ki”
Nokia director-regions (software & services, entertainment & communities) Shankar Meembat told ET
“All our internet services will eventually be an integral part of the overall Ovi brand. Since there is a strong appeal for TV content in India, we are looking at mobisodes to present news and serial highlights for audience on the move,”
Nokia Makes Phones, Right? Then Why This New Strategy?
Nokia makes phones and a lot of them. It leads the mobile handset market share in India. Apart from numbers it also rules the people’s perception in India. Goto any second-hand mobile shop and try the prices of the Nokia handsets Vs. other brands. Nokia brand, in second hand market, commands the highest premium (Well yes, there is a concept of premium in the second hand market. At least a very strong one in India).
But the market share has been declining year-on-year. With time , the mobile phones have been started to become the music player, the video player, the gaming console, the camera and what not. This was made possible due to a.) The advances made in electronics and b.) Rapidly increasing adoption of the mobile phones worldwide. This made sure that an increasingly large number of people are using mobile phones, that are capable of more than just making and receiving calls. Further, data shows that only 12% of the time was spent on talking while using a mobile phone. This meant more and more people were indulging in sharing music, clicking pictures, transferring video using their mobile phones. Personally, it became a common sight for me seeing two completely unknown people transferring ringtones and music files in public transport like local trains. The content producers like films and television production houses started deriving a chunk of their revenues through digital sale of its content.
A very good example of this is the Indiatimes’ 58888 service. You don’t think twice before requesting a famous ringtone from 58888. Even when that 10-second-ringtone costs you Rs.6. The business grew to the extent that an ecosystem evolved around this. So, we now have Mobile Content Aggregators. These are the companies which aggregate the content, fit for mobile consumption, form the original content producers. Hungama, Mauj telecom are the common names in this. You might have noticed the names of these two companies credited as “Mobile Partners” in the beginning of many Bollywood movies. Needless to say, with the increasing number of people using more capable phones, this business is becoming big.
What started happening worldwide is that People have started getting used to the integration of services. An excellent example of this is Apple. iPhone, comes preinstalled with a version of the OS X browser and can be activated using your iTunes software. iTunes can even sync with the iTunes.com music store that Apple operates and you can download music and other content directly to your iPhone. Apart from ease of use for the end user, it also generated additional revenue for the company (Apple), which can then be used to subsidize the price of the handset itself.
Nokia saw this happening. And it saw the success of iPhone. Worldwide, Nokia is a big brand. But it lost to iPhone on many counts. The WoW factor that’s associated with Apple products was there in iPhone, primarily because it included many previous blockbuster services in the iPhone. iPod and iTunes being the two of them. Nokia had been losing some market share to the iPhone, worldwide.
In India it didn’t happen because of the exorbitant price that iPhone was placed at. And that was a mistake that iPhone did. India is a nation crazy about a.) Films and b.) Cricket. If priced at the right level, mobile downloads in India could have picked up like crazy. Needless, to say, the loss was all Apple’s. Nokia understand this very well and so, decided to offer contents to the Nokia handsets. With its own online stores, Nokia can better integrate services and offer them in a seamless manner to any Nokia handset. The upside of this is that you very well know the underlying hardware platform of the handset and the online platform can be better optimized for them. Again, once this picks up, Nokia will be able to offer discounts on its handsets, because a part of the revenues will be coming through Mobile Downloads.
So, What’s Ahead? WATBlog Predicts -
Thanks to Apple’s stupidity, Nokia’s loyal customer base in India is still Nokia’s. Nokia did the right thing by announcing Nokia N96 in India, one month before the world launch. It became as a viable alternative option to the iPhone. Once they launch Ovi, the promotional activity on TV and print will be making sure that every Indian knows about it. (Remember the Nokia Maps TV Ad ?). What I expect is a crazy rush to download music, clips and other content from the Ovi platform. I am sure Nokia will act smart and make the Ovi open to the developers. There are a far larger number of Nokia users worldwide than in India. An open platform for the developers can help spur innovation to the next level.
Expect heavy promotional activities. Expect more content for your mobile phones. Expect more mobile-centric stuff like Akbar Birbal Remixed and Ram and Ria.
Also, Nokia has features for business users as well, like the Files on Ovi feature that impressed Shayon. Will Nokia be able to attract enough users to make this launch as big as it sounds in news? Is Nokia right in diverting attention and resources in building a content based business? Is there any other company that offers competition> And above all, does Nokia + Ovi poses any threat to iPhone + iTunes ?
Let us know what you think.
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Nice article…very insightful.
well this is a gr8 post but i would also love if u could have covered the way nokia is leveraging its ovi brand to promote its new phones with game,free contents & contests.and it is also doing a huge data aggregation work from all these(ovi,mosh,beta labs,virtual events) services to get its customer interaction going.and also it conducts many imp customer feedback surveys thru these services.it has podcast’s like the “The Way we live next” & “Future of S60″.and just to inform these things (ovi) have been going on with before the Iphone actually showed up.And nokia also has the Nokia music store which it promotes thru Ovi