Mark Bridge writes:
With all the excitement about the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft, it’s easy to forget another partnership between a major online brand and the Finnish mobile giant.
Exactly a year ago, Yahoo! and Nokia announced a worldwide strategic alliance that would see Nokia providing Yahoo!’s maps and navigation services under the Ovi brand, while Yahoo! would power Nokia’s Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services. The two companies would also work on sharing log-in details across Yahoo! and Ovi services.
Since then, Nokia has told us that the days of the Ovi brand are numbered... and we’ve also been told that Microsoft’s Bing will start to appear on Nokia devices.
And now Yahoo! has just reminded us about its year-old partnership, with news that the benefits of Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger are now available to Nokia mail and chat users - and people can also use their Nokia IDs on Yahoo! services.
Perhaps I’m a little cynical - but I can’t see this working out well for all three companies. That’s all I’m saying.