Nokia Rebranding Ovi to Nokia Services

Nokia will be re-branding its Ovi Store, Ovi Maps, and other Ovi Messaging, and other services to bearing the Nokia brand, rather than Ovi. The company is transitioning from Ovi to Nokia to centralize its offerings under one brand. The services and apps should still continue on with the same functionality and utility, just that it will be now a Nokia brand, rather than an Ovi brand. Nokia says:

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. 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.

The transition is expected to begin in July and to continue through 2012. The company intends to roll out new phones with the new branding in the near-term and older phones may see the new Nokia branding in services, apps, and software through future firmware updates.

I am glad to see Nokia use its name now for ‘Nokia Maps,’ ‘Nokia Messaging,’ and ‘Nokia Store,’ to name a few examples. In the U.S. where Symbian adoption is relatively low, a lot of people are still unaware of the Ovi branding and don’t really know what the ‘Ovi Store’ refers to or what ‘Ovi Maps’ is.

It’s unclear if Nokia feels that Ovi was too closely associated with Symbian and that using the Nokia brand may be the way to still leverage the company’s name as Nokia joins Microsoft with Windows Phone 7.