Nokia's Motivation Behind Ovi Uncovered
Several years ago, when Nokia bought GPS navigation company Gate5, most people were confused. When they announced Nokia Maps, it was slightly more obvious, but I think they’ve only shown off the tip of the iceberg for the Nokia Geo-Location services. Here’s why:
1. Nokia said last year that GPS would soon be a standard feature on their handsets. Today at the Mobile World Congress, they announced 4 handsets, of all range, and they all had GPS, as well as photo geotagging built-in.
2. Nokia, last year, bought Navteq. Navteq is the company that most of the GPS navigation softwares and devices on the market gets their map data from. Cha-ching, for Nokia, even if you’re not using THEIR maps, they’re still getting paid. Nice.
3. Navteq is now taking a stake in Acuity Mobile. What do they do? location-based advertising. There’s mixed feelings on location-based ads, but personally, I think it’s killer. If it will subsidize the cost of GPS software to me, and provide me with relevant ads, I’m definitely OK with it.
The thing about advertising is that people always say they hate it. They hate junk mail, they hate ads on the internet (which are often completely annoying), and they hate the notion of ads on their mobile phones. However, if you’d ask *why*, most of the time, somewhere in the response you’d hear something along the lines of “something I have no use for, or isn’t relevant to me.” I.e. if I, a twenty-something white male, started getting ads for Old Spice deodorant. Of course that’s annoying, there’s no chance I’m going to find that appealing.
But what if you’re in a new city, you fire up your GPS, and you search for pizza places. You get results for 4 places within 5 miles, one of which paid to be on top, and offers you a $2 off coupon. Perfect. You know they’re good, because 1. they can afford to advertise aside from their store sign and 2. they’re smart enough to know how to use technology to bring in customers.
Nokia also owns Enpocket, which is another mobile marketing-focused company. Last but not least was today’s announcement that Nokia has launched a premier advertising network, with the likes of BMW and Accuweather on board.
So Nokia wants to serve up ads on your phone, but do it contextually and based on your location, and with high-end names. Anyone still wondering what Ovi is about?
