Earlier this morning, Nokia released a public beta version of its Mail on Ovi service, which enables users to sign up for a free e-mail account directly from their Series 40 handsets. The new service is available worldwide and available in a dozen languages, after a test period of one month during which users in India, Malaysia and the Philippines were able to try out the service.
Mail on Ovi gives users all the features and functionalities of a PC-based e-mail account, and functions on some 35 different Series 40 handsets. Nokia claims to have shipped over 110 million of such devices globally as of October 2008, so this is definitely a major announcement, particularly for countries where mobile devices are the main digital communication hubs instead of computers. These so-called ‘emerging markets’ represent a big growth opportunity for mobile device manufacturers and service providers, so it’s no wonder Nokia is so focused on creating new services to go with lowered-price devices. (Its more advanced phones are in the Series 60 line).
Nokia Mail on Ovi is available in 12 languages during the beta period including English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Hindi, Bengali, Tagalog, Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia. Users with a Nokia Series 40 device can head over to this website to check it out.
Over the weekend, Nokia also announced that it started combining sign-ins for its overall services site Ovi.com and for its media sharing service Share on Ovi. Nokia said earlier this month it aims to make annual revenue of at least 2 billion euros ($2.79 billion) from Internet services in 2011, focusing on navigation, music, games, messaging and media.
This is such a lost cause from Nokia. They should work on integrating Y! mail or Gmail more tightly with their handsets. Or be more like Google to tie in a low end internet connection with their phones by working with the providers.
Maybe not such a lost cause because Nokia is one of the biggest cell providers in the world, so they can pull a Microsoft — have the software be ready to use as the standard mail application on all handsets and dominate the market.
nokia is the biggest mobile phone manufacturer.
i doubt people want more email accts from a wack domain name ovi.com?
ohvee, ovee, ov, ove, ovi, ocrap.
who chose that domain name? OVI sounds like womens menstral meds.
what gives nokia i know your better than this.
there are opportunities for offering custom strategic email addresses that are right under your noses. whomever possesses the greatest strategic natural language domain portfolio for providing niche email offerings just might be on to something.
PostalLocator.com – delivered
It might sound to you unreal, but for many in developing countries there’s no internet in a normal sense (like a pc). The mobile device is often the main and the only door to the WWW. Nokia being the biggest phone producer globally is just taking up these millions of users under its wings. It’s not the mail that is key, it’s future sales in these markets.
Be more openminded, dude, there are no stupid guys sitting there.
Why can’t they just make some deals with Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft? Just setup an API or something and charge for each account enabled through the phone.
I think this is pretty strong given, as one poster notes, the ubiquitous penetration of their handsets, especially in developing markets where this is the “only screen” for many users.
For historical perspective, I still have my @Yahoo.com account set up at the dawn of the digital age. I wonder how many worldwide users coming of age in web 3.0 will still have their “@ovi.com” account 10 years hence.
thumbs up for nokia, if the email application will be as easy to use as ones on blackberry and others then nokia will become a major player in mobile software, mobile internet industries.
you can’t believe that they throw good money after bad chasing development of a non-starter for revenue prospects….they should have simply built a better custom call and interface for webmail that people actually use (live, yahoo, gmail etc) and supplanted integration with an ad layer (even a simple text bar in the interface would suffice)…instead they’ve wasted time, money and effort trying to convince people to use **yet another email address*** …dumb.
I have used Windows Mobile, left that for a Blackberry, tried the iphone and decided it wasent for me. Is this supposed to compete with Blackberry (email) or Windows Mobile / iPhone (Mobile OS) ?
To all Silicon Valley focused souls,
Just consider that the majority of people in the world don’t have access to the internet yet! As such they don’t have Yahoo!, Gmail, or whatever…
By bringing email standard to hundreds of millions of users in emerging markets, Nokia will make a huge impact.
Of course, if you confuse the iPhone niche with true market power, you will never get it.
Just stay in your Silicon Cocoon…
And if you still don’t get it, think what happened with GM who confused what the US wanted (BIG BOLD HUMMERS) and what the rest of the world wanted…
Yeah they were cool and big and sexy and got a lot of attention, and now? Right, bancrupt…
This is not to say that Apple will go bancrupt, far from, but you need to look further than the US my friends…
I think the days people will use this cancer causing device is over. We really don’t need mobiles. Try it out yourself, put away your mobile aside for days, and see if it stops your life? All my needs are fulfilled wih PC
Just what the world needs, another cell phone gadget. Who the freak really needs email on a cell phone, let alone the rest of the stupidity they come with. Can’t you people wait to get home to read all the viagra, free porn, and borrow 500 grand for 50 bucks a month emails. Try leaving the house without being in constant communication. The world won’t miss you and I won’t have to tolerate listening to you idiots as you talk and walk around with bionic implants sticking out of your ears. Great, email on a cell phone. Now you assholes will have something else to do while you’re driving besides driving.
A bunch of psychos siting up in north in pipe dream of superiority thinking they are controlling the world. They think world revolve around them. First they created so much of this useless plastic with no chance of recycling. Second this also happens to cause cancer. It also destroys a small chance that we get to stay away from virtual world of Internet or email even or short time while diving or commuting. When one get away, one gets away. Now we don’t have any freedom at all. Biggest problem with communication on the go is that we are accessed without our will. PC email does not have that problem.
well emails and file sharing access from the cell phone surely is a kool idea and will make life way simpler.
I see this as an extension to Nokia PC suite , taking it on the internet. But life would be really good if they can integrate it with google mail and google calendars instead of coming up with their own stuff. Why do companies want to own everything out there instead of doing what they are good at.
Want you POP or IMAP mail pushed to your Nokia phone? Instead of “Mail on Ovi”, use Nokia’s new messaging service “Nokia Messaging”: http://email.nokia.com.
They just launched the 1.0 version last week or so.
In poorer countries where Nokia *absolutely dominates* many people don’t have email accounts. Thus the default-bundling of Ovi will be for many people be their first and perhaps life-long account.
What’s the business case around email? I think the goal is to capture ownership of the user’s “home identity” because right now, the carriers own it (its your phone #). Once you have the home identity, you can spring-board into location-aware, social networks, etc.
Nokia is the new Blackberry for the emerging countries. I have a detailed post on my blog:
http://cloudcom...f-emerging.html
its really cool and i m excited to see it in this part of the world(malaysia). I think it will chg a lot of perception and ball game for the operators and bb user. i love the e71.