Nokia closing Ovi Files service on October 1st

Rumour has it that Ovi Share is for the chop too

It's unfortunate that they are closing Ovi Files.
This is and was a very good product, but poor marketing and awareness has caused the problem. It is offering 10gb of free space man!
Dropbox offers only 2GB free space, yet people use it and want it.

I thought that Nokia would improve this service, as it can be a major selling point for their mobile ecosystem. I think, they just needed to do proper marketing.
Why are they dropping an arsenal one by one from their portfolio, yet spend millions on stupid marketing with film-stars and models.

What made Ovi Files stand out from other services was that you could access files on your remote PC even if they weren't synced to your online mirror. It was kind of a merger of DropBox and BacktomyMac. Saved my bacon once when I'd left a file at home.

It's a real pity it's going. I use DropBox as well but it's a bit of a CPU hog whereas Ovi Files wasn't.

Besides consolidation to core services, I'm sure this is also a way for Nokia to save money. From what I've read the Nokia -Siemens Networks side is a giant black hole of a money pit and both parties are looking to exit the partnership sooner rather than later.

Ovi had an online file store? Why didn't anyone tell me? ????

I actually use(d) it.

I wonder what's to become of Contacts and Agenda (+ notes and todos) because I use that too. It has improved a lot lately, it works fine for me and I would recommend it without hesitation.

Would be a shame if it also had to go, because combined with ovi mail it really is an alternative for the google suite of services, if you don't feel like using that.

"Jimmy1
Besides consolidation to core services, I'm sure this is also a way for Nokia to save money. From what I've read the Nokia -Siemens Networks side is a giant black hole of a money pit and both parties are looking to exit the partnership sooner rather than later."

@Jimmy1: As usual you're talking bullshit. To prove my point utterly, read the Q2 reports here, before talking anymore nonsense:

http://www.nokia.com/about-nokia/financials/quarterly-and-annual-information

hary536 wrote:It's unfortunate that they are closing Ovi Files.
This is and was a very good product, but poor marketing and awareness has caused the problem. It is offering 10gb of free space man!
Dropbox offers only 2GB free space, yet people use it and want it.

I thought that Nokia would improve this service, as it can be a major selling point for their mobile ecosystem. I think, they just needed to do proper marketing.
Why are they dropping an arsenal one by one from their portfolio, yet spend millions on stupid marketing with film-stars and models.

I used it heavily for about a year and then it just stopped working, refusing to upload my files. Nokia's helpdesk was useless. We never got past the "Are you sure your computer is switched on?" level of questions.

I now use SugarSync and bite the bullet re costs.

Unregistered wrote:"Jimmy1
Besides consolidation to core services, I'm sure this is also a way for Nokia to save money. From what I've read the Nokia -Siemens Networks side is a giant black hole of a money pit and both parties are looking to exit the partnership sooner rather than later."

@Jimmy1: As usual you're talking bullshit. To prove my point utterly, read the Q2 reports here, before talking anymore nonsense:

http://www.nokia.com/about-nokia/financials/quarterly-and-annual-information

Seconded. Jimmy1 you're talking utter nonsense I'm afraid. Nokia-Siemens just won a $7 billion contract to build the LTE network in the States, and LTE is the future of the telecom network, and will give Nokia a very strong hold in the States apart from anything else.

On a side note I wish all these folk whinging about iPhones, Androids and the release date of the N8 would see what a tiny part of the big picture it is - there is so much more going on in mobile and Nokia are FAAAAAAAR bigger players than Apple or Google could ever dream of being.

Ya that's true. They also had a mobile app, but not sophistacted one. I think it's just a link to the mobile website. But anyways, it used to work fine.

Hurlley wrote:Oh damn is that was it is, I remem ber go to ovi.com but could never work out what it was, I thought it was just a browser upload storage thing. If I had known it was a dropbox with 10GB I would have used it but how was it connected to mobile though, is there a mobile app for it?

Unregistered wrote:Seconded. Jimmy1 you're talking utter nonsense I'm afraid. Nokia-Siemens just won a $7 billion contract to build the LTE network in the States, and LTE is the future of the telecom network, and will give Nokia a very strong hold in the States apart from anything else.

WTF???

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67U2YS20100831

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-30/nokia-siemens-has-received-private-equity-interest.html

Yeah, because Reuters and Bloomberg are anti-Nokia U.S. gadget blogs.

Please.

So Nokia waste years arsing around trying to turn themselves into an iinternet services company without any skill set at it, meanwhile forgetting to do their core business (making handsets and platforms for them) . Now they are quietly getting out of trying to take on the whole of Internet and Web (mobile or otherwise) innovation and are correctly reverting to their core business only just in time.

However it's all very reminiscent of Ngage - years and millions (billions in this case) messing around whilst the rest of the market actually executes. Quite how Nokia decided they were going to be an internet company and step into Google land whilst ironically standing by and watching Google push Nokia off it's own hill, we can only speculate on. But saf to say it's not gone well and the disintegration of their share price reflects this sorry muddle and misdirection and waste of time, resources, capital and most importantly perhaps market opportunity (early mover).

Sure we may see the fruit of the developer push in 2011 but isn't that always the case with Nokia - "always Jam tomorrow never Jam today". Weren't we meant to be seeing the fruit of their services push arriving in 2010? Instead of which they appear to be cutting them due to (unsurprising to those watching on) low take up. So apart from dropping cloud sharing what's next for the chop? as none of their service strategy appears to be producing revenue. Ovi Music, Contacts (seriously are they trying to rival established social networks) Calendar?, the list of what they've cobbled together over the last couple of years goes on. Meanwhile Apple make millions of gaming - that Nokia no longer support (not even the hardware until new units arrive later this year). Their shares are stuck amongst the worst performing tech companies over the last few years and it's not just analysts ignoring or undervaluing them they really have made a fist of it.. It's like a train crash happening in slow motion and only the passengers (Nokia, Symbian and their acolytes) can't see it coming.

Hi, I work for Nokia. Yes, we have ramped down Ovi Files. But the long term benefits will be better for consumers because we are focusing on creating better experiences in maps, music, apps, messaging, email, IM and social networks.

For example, Ovi Maps is a cornerstone of our strategy to provide contextual services to the more than 17 million people who already use it. It's a a free, constantly updated navigation service that has the most global footprint of any of our competitors.

In addition, we currently host a digital music service that is #1 in 6 markets and an apps store that gets 1.7 million downloads daily. Nearly 14 million people in emerging markets have accessed the Internet for the first time using Ovi Mail and we will enable millions more our browser that is to come.

So we've got momentum in services...we're not going away...and forums like this one will continue to be absolutely important for us to talk with you about what you'd like to see from us in the future. I welcome your comments and suggestions, my email is below.

Shane McLaughlin
shane.1.mclaughlin(at)nokia.com

I was an Ovi Files user before, but switched to Dropbox because the Ovi Files client kept on downloading and installing the wrong language on my PC. I emailed support, but never gave me a proper solution. Other than that, it does not let you choose what to sync after installation. It just syncs your entire My Documents folder which will take an eternity. It was promising, but too bad.

If Nokia is going to kill some of its services and in my opinion, its best that Nokia just focus on making and improving their handsets.

I was extremely upset when I received the email from Nokia re: Ovi Files' discontinuation. I've read recommendations for "drop box", "sugar sync", etc. I would have to highly recommend 4shared sync (www.4shared.com). Free 10gb (pay for 100gb), symbian app, desktop pc app, synchronization w/ pc files/on-line/mobile files, file sharing, I could go on. I'll miss Ovi Files, but this is making it easier.

Unregistered wrote:an apps store that gets 1.7 million downloads daily.

How much of that is paid content and how much free?

What's the daily gross revenue out of that number?

How much of that are applications or games, and how much is wallpapers & such?

What's the average number of content per device model?

What's the average split between apps/games and other content types per device model?

Exluding a handful of the top sellers (so that they don't skew the result too much), how much revenue on average does a single content item generate to its publisher (after taxes, and Nokia's share and sales costs if Nokia does not absorb them directly)?

In other words, the number of worldwide downloads per day across close to probably a hundred phone models is not telling that much regarding how successful the app store is, or isn't.