Professor sees room for improvement in Nokia services

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When Nokia published its first quarter results last week, the achievements of the activities of the new Services & Software unit were given just one line, indicating that the unit's turnover was EUR 84 million.
     The likely reason for the low profile was that the unit accounted to a modest 0.6 per cent of the turnover of the whole company.
     
Last autumn Nokia announced that it would take a serious leap into Internet services. The company is building services for the consumer under the name Ovi, which it hopes will turn into a major money earner.
     "Nokia is on the right track by announcing that it is a service provider and not just a manufacturer of devices", says Timo Koivumäki, Professor of information and Communication Business, who divides his time between the Helsinki University of Technology and the University of Oulu.
     
However, he is not convinced that the Ovi concept in its current form is a sensible choice for Nokia.
     "Studies show that general services that are not tied down to a context do not bring the consumer so much added value that they would want to use these services on their mobile phones."
     For instance, I do not believe that video distribution services will make headway as a mobile phone service, because it is more appropriate to distribute and watch videos on a computer", Koivumäki says.
     The Ovi pages currently contain Nokia's music, games and map services, for which the company is constantly developing improved versions. The services have so far not sparked any great frenzy among users.
     
Professor Koivumäki feels that Nokia should expand Ovi to include services of other companies.
     He sees other potential for improvement in the current version of the service as well. "Ovi was a good start for Nokia into providing services, but in its present form it does not have the status of a final goal. Ovi is one kind of an experiment for what the world could be like", Koivumäki says.
     
The professor does not have concrete answers to what Ovi should be like. He feels that successful services should take advantage of a sense of community, and local knowledge - that is, commitment to contexts. The view is based on experiences from the Rotuaari research project at the University of Oulu.
     Mobile phone operators and manufacturers tried to build a separate Internet world for use on mobile phones, with specific paid services.
     However, development took a different turn, and now mobile phones are increasingly using online services that are familiar from the world of computers.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Nokia Q1/2008: Weak dollar eating into value of handset market (18.4.2008)
  Nokia stock buoyant on announcement of new music & games portal and N81 handset (30.8.2007)

Links:
  Rotuaari research project
  Nokia: Introducing Ovi

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