Last August, I, along with a few other bloggers, was invited to London for Nokia’s Go Play event. This was a massive ‘product launch’ (if you can call it that) where they dropped the Ovi bomb, as well as the new Nokia Music Store, demo’d the Nokia Music Player, a new desktop application that was to rival iTunes, and Ngage. They also announced two new handsets, the N95 8GB, the N81, and a few S40 handsets.
It’s now the end of January, roughly 6 months later, and what’s new? Well, the handsets have all made it to market, but Ovi is still technically vaporware, given that they’ve had Nokia World 2007 in Amsterdam and CES 2008 in Las Vegas, and not really given us any more information on what it is. I personally have not heard anything else regarding this new Nokia Music Player desktop application that was so beautifully demonstrated at the Nokia: Go Play event. The Nokia Music store has only been launched in the U.K., and Ngage has been delayed several times.
Nokia, who claim they want to be an ‘Internet Services’ company, can’t seem to actually *launch* any internet services….
What’s the deal, Nokia? You’ve announced such COOL services. Ovi sounds positively hard-core cool. The Nokia Music Store shows promise, and Ngage STILL has a loyal following from the first debacle who are ready to give this second attempt a run.
Nokia, you’re talking all this stuff up, and you’re doing great at releasing devices, but currently you’re ‘oh-for-three’ in the releasing of these newfangled Internet Services that we’re supposed to be all jazzed up about. Meanwhile, more and more people are becoming entrenched in other music stores such as Amazon’s DRM-free offering, and Windows Media Player and other desktop players that allow us to easily manage our growing music libraries and sync them to our devices. More and more people are getting their mobile games elsewhere, all the time learning to ignore the useless Ngage icon on their new Nseries handset. Ovi’s door is still closed, and we’re beginning to forget it’s there to begin with.
Here’s hoping that Mobile World Congress sees some actual launches, as opposed to more smoke and mirrors around these new Internet Services that are supposed to be coming. We’re ready for the Next Episode, Nokia, so stop showing reruns.
