Nokia have always talked about how their software and services, via Ovi, are opening up the connected world and the internet to millions of people all over the world – and one of the biggest enablers in this area is the ability for people to use their first email address. Over on the Ovi Blog they’ve highlighted one example in Bangladesh with the Finns rolling out Ovi branded “burger vans” to promote the Ovi Mail service. Read on for some comments.

This is a strong part of Nokia’s vision, to capture huge numbers of people who are not already using smartphones and get them online through their hardware, and hopefully have a significant number of them continue to use the Ovi services and software.

Unlike other manufacturer solutions, Ovi is relatively porous. There’s nothing to stop you (for example) setting up a free Hotmail account and using their java client on your Nokia smartphone, to get your mapping data from Google, to buy your music from Amazon… there are alternatives to every Ovi service, but by grouping them together and making them easily accessible, Nokia have the best of both worlds – a chance to show what they can do for the user, but not limiting them because of a choice of hardware.

-- Ewan Spence, May 2010.