Slowly but surely, Nokia's winning over even the most skittish critics of its push into the content space, and the latest win might be the most symbolically satisfying for them of all. France Telecom, parent of Orange -- an early dissenter of the Ovi plan -- has announced that it has entered into a broad agreement with Nokia to co-brand its services with Espoo's own, much the same way T-Mobile Germany and others have done. The three-year deal will see music sales coming from Orange's stores and search and mapping solutions coming from Nokia, while both companies will offer video games. Despite the massive investment, it's starting to look like that 2010 payoff date Nokia has planned might not be unreasonable in the least.

[Via textually.org]

Mobile services are a tough nut to crack by any standard, so when a new player wants to step up to the plate, they'd best have a whole heap of cash in tow and a dedication to stick it out for the long term. That's exactly the path Nokia finds itself going down, with the CFO admitting last week that it dropped nine figures (in euros -- not dollars) last year ramping up various segments of its Ovi initiative -- chiefly the Music Store, we'd imagine -- and will continue to shovel giant piles of cash in that direction until at least 2010, at which point the company hopes to finally see a profit for its efforts. That's a long time to commit to being in "investment mode" as they're calling it, but when you control a crushingly massive percentage of the world's mobile market share, you can probably afford those sorts of things.

Nokia's just unveiled an interesting add-on to both its Ovi suite of multimedia services and its very capable Maps navigation app called "Maps on Ovi" (naturally). Perhaps sensing the trend toward connected, social navigation devices and services, Maps on Ovi allows users of Nokia Maps to sync routes both to and from devices, ultimately sharing planned and traveled trips online with other Ovi users. Seeing how waypoint searching and routing is something you probably don't want to do exclusively on your phone, the program sounds like a pretty brilliant idea from that aspect alone, and tying in the sharing capability is just icing on the cake. The tentative plan is to have a build ready for public use this summer; S60 devices (read: Nokia Maps clients) will be the first to benefit, but it sounds like Nokia wants to expand it to other platforms in the future.

When we'd heard that T-Mobile Germany was at loggerheads with Nokia over its Ovi services, the carrier was quick to point out that it didn't offer any Ovi-compatible devices in its lineup to begin with and that it was "in discussions with Nokia about this topic and [was] confident to find a common path in the near future." Sure enough, it looks as though that "common path" has now been found with an announcement that Nokia will be working closely with T-Mob to integrate its web'n'walk mobile internet service with Ovi for deployment on future devices customized for the carrier. There's no telling what sorts of contracts got signed behind the scenes here, but if we had to guess, we'd say most of T-Mobile's existing content-based revenue streams are going to end up being preserved by appearing within the Ovi sandbox on these new phones. A loss for Nokia? Not if it wants its phones to keep appearing on T-Mobile Germany's store shelves, it isn't.

Reports out of Germany suggest that T-Mobile's German network has pulled all handsets capable of accessing Nokia's all-encompassing media playground, Ovi, over concerns that the service will interfere with programs T-Mobile is planning on launching itself. It's long been suspected that carriers would frown on Ovi, fearing that it'll cannibalize profits from carriers' own offerings -- but shows of support from Vodafone, TIM, and others have more recently seemed to give the whole scheme an overwhelming vote of confidence. A quick scan of T-Mobile Germany's online store reveals that the N73 and N95 are still holding it down, but yeah, that's about it as far as Nseries fare goes -- and Nokia made a point of mentioning today that its new 6550 has specific support for T-Mobile's own services. Hopefully they'll be able to get this whole spat resolved sooner rather than later, possibly by taking the Vodafone route and bundling Ovi side by side with the carrier's branded services, because we're pretty sure no carrier -- particularly a European one -- wants to go very long without offering Nokia's mainstream stuff.

[Thanks, Khattab]

Update: We've received an official statement from T-Mobile International on the matter, and in short, Ovi handsets weren't pulled because they weren't being offered to begin with. T-Mobile and Nokia are working together to figure out exactly how their respective services will be offered in the future, but yeah, we're not so worried that this is the death of Nokia on T-Mobile's German network. See the full statement after the break.

It still hasn't been conclusively proven that Ovi's going to fly with carriers -- well, maybe it has, since the Vodafone juggernaut has jumped in head first -- but either way, it's looking like Samsung wants a little piece of that action. It's unclear at this point just how far-reaching Samsung's initiative will be, but the company announced its intention at MWC to develop unified internet services for its handsets, which we figure is pretty much code for "we want to continue to make money from our devices after they're in customers' hands." As RCR points out, features like its blogging client and navigation are currently outsourced to ShoZu and Navigon, respectively, and moving forward, all that stuff will be rolled up and maintained in-house. Whether doing so is going risk stepping on carriers' revenue models the way Ovi has done, though, remains to be seen.

Don't hold your breath, guys! A Nokia board member has gone on the record saying that the "door is open" to Apple to join its Ovi initiative -- a collection of multimedia-centric services delivered directly to handsets through a portal app -- by adding iTunes into the mix. Of course, Nokia has its own Music Store, a direct competitor to iTunes -- but in the bigger scheme of things, it's hard to argue against the clout (Nokia calls it "enrichment" for its customers) that the largest digital music store in the world brings to the table. We suspect that Nokia's recent ribbing of the iPhone (not to mention that these two giants are sworn enemies on several levels, or the fact that Apple is one of the less cooperative companies in the biz) will probably put the kibosh on any possible deal, but it's all good, Nokia; you just keep on keepin' on with that iPhone of your own and roll deep with your own store.

At first, Nokia's multimedia-centric Ovi announcement was met with a downright icy reception among European carriers for fear that it was going to hit 'em where it hurts -- in the bottom line. Things have been warming up, though, thanks in part to Nokia's willingness to customize carrier-branded devices to offer access to both Ovi services and carriers' own services side by side -- a tad confusing to consumers, yes, but likely a win-win for revenue. Telecom Italia is the latest group to give in and accept Nokia's encroachment on its bread and butter, agreeing to offer up the N81 and N95 8GB preloaded with the goods. They're calling it a "sustainable business model" with a "mutually beneficial approach" -- but ultimately, the proof's in the pudding, so we'll have to see how long this goes on once those two models have run their course.

Carrier reaction to Nokia's Ovi suite of multimedia apps has been tepid at best -- and understandably so, considering that the company's gunning for a share of on-device entertainment revenue, a cash stream historically reserved for carriers themselves. Fortunately for Espoo, though, the 800-pound gorilla of European carriers has gone against the trend to issue Ovi a hearty endorsement. Vodafone and Nokia have announced that Nokia handsets released on Voda in '08 will rock out with Ovi services installed -- with a catch, of course: Vodafone's own competing services will also be installed. The companies say it's a win for consumers because the diametrically opposed apps somehow compliment one another, but by loading both Nokia's Music Store and Vodafone's own music service, for example, it could all be a daunting challenge for consumers to figure out what's what. We'll have to wait and see how this all plays out on retail devices in a few months.

Nokia just took the wraps off their Ovi (which means "the door" in Finnish) Internet services brand. The idea is to pull the Nokia Music Store, N-Gage, Nokia Maps, and all future Nokia services into a single suite of service offerings. Over the next 12 months, Nokia announced that it would "integrate new user interface elements, service suites and web communities" into what they promise will be an "open environment." Expect to hear more from Ovi when it launches in Q4.

Just as we expected, Nokia announced their totally revamped N-Gage gaming platform. An eco-sytstem now, covering software-enabled S60-based handsets, games, and a full-featured community-based service to link it all together. A new mobile gaming platform, if you will, which Nokia plans to extend beyond just Nokia devices. The service will offer tournaments, global rankings, and other events within the gaming community. Cost of games will cost up to €10, are free to try, and can be rented over varying periods. All available starting November. More as the information becomes available.