Nokia claim to get it - keynote 2007

"Experience can be improved". Photo credit.

Nokia acknowledge their user-interface / user-experience needs overhauling as they realise that whilst functionality is all well and good, usability / user experience are equally if not more important to attract more than the power user geeks.

Especially if they want consumers to start using services beyond voice and text.

Nokia seemed to have listened directly to this issue, acknowledged it and will attempt to address it through their strategy of becoming a services / internet company (and the accompanying integrated devices).

The announcement of Universal joining with Nokia for free annual music subscription, Avvenu buyout and Internet Radio apps were not as interesting to me in the keynote as the Ovi detail.

Besides the TIM announcement which makes the third operator alongside Telefonica and Vodafone to integrate Ovi the actual service itself seems more integrated than I first thought.

Like a cross between Dashwire (see here) + Widgets/RSS web feeds (a la Netvibes) + Social Networking (Contacts / Relationships) + 3rd party web services (not just Nokia's n-Gage and music offerings) with full mobile seamlessness based around context and wrapped up in a dashboard user experience.

Or as Nokias CEO puts it, a dashboard for your digital life that's personalised / localised and socialised.

Single sign on, one-synch backup, a fixed browser toolbar and desktop versions (all with the same ui) as well of course, the central mobile element rolled in (lets hope, unlike the UK Nokia music store that it works in Firefox and is more compelling than the PC desktop clients they've built to date).

Will Nokia get this right or will it take an Apple, a Google (via Android and/or their own ODP), a Yahoo or even one of the existing mobile On Device Portal vendors to show them how ?

We'll see.

I'm still waiting for my Ovi beta invite so cannot judge yet and as ever it will all be down to the execution.

Interesting announcements though all the same as the big N move to tie the web and mobile together, something I've been advocating for a while and is inevitable, isn't it - what do you think ?