Nokia will Close Ovi Brand and Get Closer with Microsoft

Recently technology world are filled with news that Nokia is revamping Ovi Store brand by changing its name to Nokia Store. In Finnish (Nokia’s headquarter is in Finland) “Ovi” means door. So Ovi Store can be translated into door to various application and launched by Nokia in 2008. Ovi Store itself is one of Nokia’s contribution to marketplace for application, despite being a little bit late if compared to Apple’s AppStore and Google’s Android Marketplace, and also some telcos in different countries even have their own application marketplace.

It can be said that Nokia had lost their momentum when they launched Ovi Store, and it looked like Nokia will do great effort to bring Nokia Store’s popularity back to their users. Nokia is not going to fade. In some countries like China and Indonesia, Nokia is still the biggest cellphone market share holder although the growth is not as fast as Android, iPhone, and Blackberry.

Other than changing “Ovi Store” with “Nokia Store”, Nokia is also rumored that their monbile division is in negotiating with IT giant, Microsoft for acquisition process. If this rumor is true, Microsoft will run Nokia’s mobile division. What’s left for Nokia will probably be just telecommunication network infrastructure called Nokia-Siemens Network.

The relationship between Nokia and Microsoft is getting closer since the agreement to bring OS Windows Phone 7 to Nokia’s devices. So now a deeper partnership for acquisition process is understandable. Stephen Elop, Nokia’ s CEO (an ex Microsoft) is taking a daring move, many say that this partnership is a form of defeat for Nokia in OS war and many from Nokia developers community show their concern about it.

Nokia is in critical time. Their relationship with their developers and partners changes drastically (in terms of positive and negative changes) and they are having turmoil inside their own company. One thing for sure, Nokia should immediately get their steady position to hold down their declining selling and maintain their brand and product, which is actually still good for mass consumer.

Narendra Wicaksono from Nokia Indonesia (another ex Microsoft) has been working very hard to maintain Nokia’s developer community in Indonesia and below is his comment:

“The main reason for this decision is because Nokia is a very famous brand with maintained reputation, and globally loved. Transition will be conducted soon and the only thing users will notice is the name change, from Ovi to Nokia. They will still experience the same service.”

Translated by Nita Sellya.