By making entry into the service provider domain, Nokia is ready with its Internet-based services initiative ‘Ovi’ with the aim to entice its Indian customers.

At first, Ovi will be available in three different tastes of music, gaming, entertainment and navigation attached to it.

Vineet Taneja, Head of Go to Market, India, Sales, Nokia India stated, “Ovi will open the door to Nokia's Internet services. We are looking at giving a unified user interface for mobile, PC and online media. India has close to 40 million Internet users and we are moving towards the 250-million mobile subscriber mark. With Ovi we will try and bring the power of Internet to a greater scale.”

Ovi, which means ‘door’ in Finnish, gives end users the permission to access their social network, communities and content, plus working as a gateway into Nokia's services division.

"Ovi means a lot of things packed into one. However, to start with in India, it would be music, games and navigation. We already have N-Gage, which is integrated as part of Ovi. We would be launching the gaming part in India in the next three months. Users can share games seamlessly with this. Music is another focus for us. Nokia Music store has more than two million songs on the web. With Ovi these can be accessed via PC or mobile. As far as navigation is concerned, we have Nokia Maps where we are covering close to 150 countries. Within India we have already covered eight cities so far and moving forward we would be adding more to this,” Mr. Taneja added.

While stating the significance of ‘Ovi’, Mr. Taneja stated that it also features the key for moving from web 2.0 to web next generation (NG).

“These are just some of the applications and capabilities that we would be launching in India initially, as the market accepts it and as we grow, we would be focusing a lot towards delivering solutions for our end consumers,” he added.

In a bid to carry on its leadership position in the Indian mobile handset market, Nokia is shifting gears by reorganizing its business plan with a focus on providing services and solutions.

Under the new organization, Nokia will have three main sections. The company had its operations under mobile phones, enterprises and multimedia businesses up till now. These three segments have been broke up into single devices unit, responsible for making the best device portfolio for the marketplace.

In addition, Nokia has introduced two new business divisions - Services & Software, reflecting Nokia’s strategic emphasis on growing its offering of consumer Internet services and enterprise solutions and software and markets, responsible for management of Nokia’s supply chains, sales channels and marketing activities.