Nokia kills Ovi, rebrands as Nokia Services

Helsinki, May 16: The Finnish phone maker Nokia announced on Monday, May 16 that it will re-brand Ovi services as Nokia services in a transition expected to continue into 2012.

Nokia said that all services under Ovi umbrella will be re-branded to as Nokia, with no planned disruption to the service roadmaps. Nokia aims to centralize all its services under one brand and to unify their brand architecture.

"We have made the decision to change our service branding from Ovi to Nokia. By centralizing our services identity under one brand, not two, we will reinforce the powerful master brand of Nokia and unify our brand architecture – while continuing to deliver compelling opportunities and experiences for partners and consumers alike," Nokia"s EVP and Chief Marketing Officer, Jerri DeVard said on Nokia Conversations blog.

Nokia explained that the re-branding will begin in Jul 2011 and is expected to complete it across all countries and all services by the end of 2012. New Nokia smartphones and mobile phones will be equipped with the new branding and the current users will be updated through future software updates.

"The reasons for this decision includes the fact that Nokia is a well-known and highly-loved brand the world over. Our mobile experiences are tightly integrated with our devices – there is no longer a differentiation," Jerri explains. "For example, if consumers want the best mobile navigation experience, they know it"s a Nokia that they can rely on. These last few years, and moving forward, our mission remains unchanged: we will continue our work to deliver compelling, unified mobile service offerings and next-generation, disruptive technologies," he further added.

Nokia assured that the re-branding is only a name-changing and the services will continue as before. The only difference consumers can expect to see is the replacement of the word Ovi with Nokia.

OneIndia News