Nokia Moving Into Content, Social Media

Nokia, one of the world’s leading cell phone manufacturers, is expanding its focus, as evidenced by a series of recent acquisitions and initiatives. The company best known as the global leader in cell phones; now it’s moving into the growing sphere of mobile content and social media.

When Nokia finalized its purchase of the mobile ad firm Enpocket last week, the transaction became the most recent in a string of clear signals indicating the company is shifting towards a new, more diverse type of business model.

“We see the growth of our company as getting into Internet services… we’re putting so many phones our there that have advanced video capability and WiFi. So, the more that we can put services behind them, the more we can connect people, do really interesting things, and grow ourselves in interesting ways.�

Those are words from George Linardos, director of business development and marketing for Nokia’s new mobile content sharing platform, dubbed MOSH (short for “mobilize and share�). The service allows users to easily transfer pictures, videos, and audio files from phone to phone; Nokia hopes to turn MOSH – in beta testing right now – into a mobile form of the social media that is currently ubiquitous on the Internet.

In addition, Nokia will launch its own music store, called Ovi, later this fall. Ovi will also include Internet-based content that includes gaming and mapping in addition to music. Ovi, like MOSH, is expected to take advantage of the mobile ad revenue Nokia will be able to generate through Enpocket.

One final note: all these services are expected to be available on any cell phone, not just Nokia models. It’s an interesting strategy, one that – according to Gartner research – is based on the idea that “the day of the discrete device has passed and functions are converging on mobile phones.�