BARCELONA, Spain – It’s easy for milestones to blur into the scenery as Nokia services continue to pick up pace and leapfrog landmarks. So today we want to hit the pause button for a moment to help bring it all into focus and look at what has been achieved. With one chameleon-like eye always pointed at the horizon, of course.
Join us after the jump as we take a look at the accomplishments of Nokia services in recent times, including its acceleration in the apps realm via Ovi Store, along with milestones in location, music and messaging. Plus, we take stock of services tailored for growth economies such as Nokia Money mobile banking and Life Tools. Read on to get the full lowdown, and hear what Nokia’s head of services, Niklas Savander, has to say about today’s list of landmark achievements.
Ovi Store success
In a recent poll here on Conversations many of you told us that apps and services are in your top three when it comes to scope for innovation, so what better place to begin on our milestone march that with Ovi Store and apps. It’s been less than ten months since Ovi Store launched, yet it has already established fully localized stores in 18 countries and 30 languages, and is now host to over one million downloads a day. This is supported by smart integrated mobile billing from 60 operators, and throughout 2010 more will be added, along with further improvements and an ongoing avalanche of new apps. An exciting prospect.
Ovi Maps landmarks and free navigation
We were stoked to be able to break news back in January of Nokia offering free global voice-guided navigation for GPS-enabled smartphones via a new version of Ovi Maps. This coupled with an announcement of gratis premium location-based services to support free navigation. Milestones-wise, there have been over 3 million downloads of Ovi Maps, now clocking more than one download a second, 24 hours a day, totaling around 100,000 downloads a day.
Music milestones
The launch of Comes With Music has enabled folk to download and keep limitless free tunes from Ovi Music in 27 territories across the globe, including last week’s addition of the Middle East. But perhaps most interesting is that the average person downloads 500 free tunes in the first few weeks, which would cost around 450 Euros from Apple’s iTunes service. Plus, the catalogue of songs available continues to grow, and has now hit the nine million mark.
Nokia’s head of services, Niklas Savander, gave his thoughts on the milestones:
“Our recipe for success has some pretty simple ingredients: delighting consumers. Yes, we are in more places, serving more people, with more great content and services. True, more than a million apps are being downloaded a day from our store; Comes with Music is now available in over 25 markets; and every second of the day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, another person downloads our new Ovi Maps app. These are great achievements, but our goal is to delight hundreds of millions of consumers around the world – and we are well on our way… Our global footprint means we have scaled fast, reaching a really significant number of people using a variety of different phones and smartphones. We started the year with a bang with our free Ovi Maps navigation launch and we have just announced the pilot of Nokia Money running in one of India’s largest metropolitan areas. Going forward, we are increasing the speed and concentrating on developing a magic experience for the people that use our services.”
Millions on Ovi Mail
Back at CES 2010, OPK mentioned in his keynote speech a surprising stat that 75 per cent of the world’s population don’t have access to email. So it’s hugely encouraging to see that Ovi Mail continues to grow in popularity, enabling people to get email on their device where they mightn’t have access to a computer. Now one million people a month open an Ovi Mail account, this often being their first online identity. This takes the total to six million Ovi Mail accounts created in a little over a year.
Nokia Money pilot
Nokia has partnered with YES BANK to launch a pilot of Nokia Money mobile banking in Pune, one of the largest metropolitan areas in India, dubbed Mobile Money Services by YES BANK. The pilot scheme will let people transfer money to another person simply by using the person’s mobile phone number. They’ll also be able to pay utility bills and top up SIM cards. Looking ahead, there will also be the facility to pay for goods and services.
Watch our Nokia Money interview to find out more >>
Nokia Life Tools takes off
Here on Conversations we’ve closely tracked the emergence of Nokia Life Tools with keen interest, so we’re delighted to be able to report that now around one million people have subscribed to Life Tools. It’s availability in India and Indonesia will be joined by other territories throughout 2010.
As always, let us know what you think in the comments section directly below.