Nokia Passes Key Milestones as Services Business Continues Strong Momentum

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Feb 15, 2010, 07:46 ET

BARCELONA, February 15, 2010 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- With a great user experience, an aggressive global rollout plan and a focus on local relevance, Nokia truly put its services on the map - and the strong momentum continues.

"Our recipe for success has some pretty simple ingredients: delighting consumers. Yes, we are in more places, serving more people, with more great content and services. True, more than a million apps are being downloaded a day from our store; Comes with Music is now available in over 25 markets; and every second of the day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, another person downloads our new Ovi Maps app. These are great achievements, but our goal is to delight hundreds of millions of consumers around the world - and we are well on our way," says Niklas Savander, head of Nokia's (NYSE: NOK) services business.

"Our global footprint means we have scaled fast, reaching a really significant number of people using a variety of different phones and smartphones. We started the year with a bang with our free Ovi Maps navigation launch and we have just announced the pilot of Nokia Money running in one of India's largest metropolitan areas. Going forward, we are increasing the speed and concentrating on developing a magic experience for the people that use our services."

Nokia highlighted landmark achievements for its key service areas:

Location: Launched in late January, the new Ovi Maps features drive and walk navigation in 74 countries and 46 languages, as well as traffic information in many. All new Nokia GPS-enabled smartphones will include this great service - at no extra cost.

    - More than 3 million Ovi Maps downloaded to date
    - More than one download per second, 24 hours a day; around 100,000
      downloads a day
    - Rich functionality and the best mobile maps coverage in the world

Music: Last week, Comes With Music grew to 27 markets with its arrival in the Middle East. People that own a Comes With Music device can download as much free music as they want from Ovi Music and, unlike other online music services, can keep them on their device forever. Music downloaded from the Ovi Music a la carte menu is also DRM-free.

    - Ovi Music is in 33 markets, making Nokia the world's most scaled global
      digital music provider
    - The average person using Comes With Music downloads 500 free songs in
      the first few weeks of using the service, which would cost about
      EUR 450 from iTunes
    - More than nine million tracks in the Ovi Music catalogue

Store: Launched in May 2009, multiple upgrades and experience improvements have improved the browsing and search experience, leading to a significant increase in the number of downloads. In 2010, Ovi Store will have more languages, billing support, improvements and of course, lots more apps.

    - More than one million downloads a day
    - The number of people shopping on the store doubles every month
    - Fully localized store in 18 countries supporting 30 languages, and
      serving 90 percent of Store visitors with their local language
    - Integrated mobile billing from 60 operators in 18 countries

Messaging: A million people a month open an Ovi Mail account, often their first online identity, bringing the total number of accounts created to more than six million in just over a year. Working closely with operators, Nokia Messaging, Nokia's push email service, is now signed up with over 70 operators.

Nokia Money: Global financial services initiative starts in India

In partnership with YES BANK, a commercial pilot of the global mobile financial services initiative has started in Pune, one of the largest metropolitan areas in India. The service in Pune, called Mobile Money Services by YES BANK, brings financial services to the consumers' mobile devices.

"The Nokia Money initiative based on Obopay's platform is initially targeted at growth markets and designed to work in partnership with multiple network operators and banks, involving distributors and merchants in a dynamic open ecosystem to seamlessly provide the new services. YES BANK is our first partner in India to bring this service to market," said Teppo Paavola, VP and general manager of Mobile Financial Services at Nokia.

    - Initial phase: consumers will be able to transfer money to another
      person just by using the person's mobile phone number, pay utility
      bills as well as recharge their prepaid SIM cards (SIM top-up).
    - Later, consumers will also be able to pay merchants for goods and
      services.

Nokia Life Tools:

Nokia Life Tools is providing rural subscribers with livelihood and life improvement services, including agriculture and education services. Subscribers primarily depend on the agriculture trade and live around the poverty threshold - which makes parting with one or two dollars each month for a mobile service a substantial investment. Since its launch in mid-2009, around one million people have already subscribed to the service. Nokia Life Tools is available in India and Indonesia, and will roll out to more markets this year.

Please visit http://www.nokia.com/press for press materials.

For more information on Nokia in Barcelona, please visit: http://events.nokia.com/mwc/

About Nokia

Nokia is a pioneer in mobile telecommunications and the world's leading maker of mobile devices. Today, we are connecting people in new and different ways - fusing advanced mobile technology with personalized services to enable people to stay close to what matters to them. We also provide comprehensive digital map information through NAVTEQ; and equipment, solutions and services for communications networks through Nokia Siemens Networks.

http://www.nokia.com

SOURCE Nokia Corporation