Nokia and Yahoo! join forces: Ovi Mail and Chat to be branded as “powered by Yahoo!”

Today is a very special day for both Nokia and Ovi: just moments ago we announced that Nokia and Yahoo! have joined forces to create an alliance that leverages each others’ strengths in email, instant messaging, and maps and navigation services. The purpose of the alliance is to provide ...

Today is a very special day for both Nokia and Ovi: just moments ago we announced that Nokia and Yahoo! have joined forces to create an alliance that leverages each others’ strengths in email, instant messaging, and maps and navigation services. The purpose of the alliance is to provide consumers with access to world-class experiences on both PC and mobile devices.

What exactly does this mean to the Ovi services you know and love? Well, as part of the alliance Nokia will become the exclusive provider of Yahoo!’s maps and navigation services, branded as “powered by Ovi”, and Yahoo! will become the exclusive global provider of Nokia’s Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services, branded as “powered by Yahoo!”. In other words, Nokia will get to leverage Yahoo!’s expertise and innovation in email and messaging, bringing new experiences for our Ovi Mail and Messaging customers, and Yahoo! will benefit from Nokia’s strength and investment in maps and navigation services.

Nokia has been working with Yahoo! over the past five years on a number of projects, for example when launching Yahoo! Go Mobile on Nokia devices. This latest venture, however, is something even bigger. I, for one, am absolutely thrilled about the fact that millions of Yahoo! users will have the opportunity to experience the unique capabilities of Ovi Maps, and Ovi Mail and Chat regulars will also be able to tap into new experiences from Yahoo!.

You obviously already knew that Ovi Maps covers 77 countries in 46 languages and that 1.2B people use a Nokia device (I mean, obviously), but did you know that Yahoo! has 586M+ unique visitors globally, reaching a whopping 48% of the online population? And that in the U.S., Yahoo! is the second most visited site online?

What can I say? You know a good deal when you see one

Another wonderful change that you will also see is improved and consolidated access to a number of both Nokia’s and Yahoo!’s services. In the future, you can use your Ovi ID across Yahoo!’s services and access the online content and services you need. Remembering which one of your hundreds of passwords is the right one? No more!

Needless to say, we here at Ovi are very excited (I mean, I’m always excited anyway but today my excitement has a very special kick to it!) What about you? Are you as thrilled as we are?

-Niini

P.S. Most of the co-branded service offerings are expected to become available from the second half of 2010, with global availability expected in 2011.

Source : http://blog.ovi.com/2010/05/24/nokia-and-yahoo-joi...