WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.
Nokia is to phase out its Ovi brand, renaming the various online services under the Ovi umbrella simply as ‘Nokia’ services.
In an official Nokia blog post this morning, Nokia’s EVP and CMO, Jerri DeVard, said the move was designed to “centralise our services identity under one brand, not two”, and “reinforce the powerful master brand of Nokia and unify our brand architecture.”
The brand transition will begin in July this year, with the intention of it being completed across all countries and all services by the end of 2012. Consumers buying a new Nokia device will see the changes “later this year”, while existing customers will see the new rebrand via future software updates. However, Nokia insisted that the move was “solely a name-changing exercise and the service roadmaps will continue exactly as planned.”
The four-year old Ovi brand (which means ‘door’ in Nokia’s native Finnish) is used by virtually all of Nokia’s online mobile services, including Ovi Mail, Ovi Maps and the Ovi Store mobile apps storefront. “Our mobile experiences are tightly integrated with our devices – there is no longer a differentiation,” explained DeVard. Although not mentioned in the blog post, it is likely that the decision to dump the Ovi brand is linked to Nokia’s decision to use Microsoft’s Windows Phone as its primary smartphone platform.
As part of this deal many of their respective service offerings are to be pooled together, while the Ovi Store is to be rolled into Windows Phone's Marketplace.
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