Nokia denies halting investment in Ovi Share

Nokia is disputing published reports it plans to halt investment in its Ovi Share media-sharing site, despite closing the Seattle office that developed the service. Speaking Tuesday at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in Boston, Nokia's executive vice president of services Tero Ojanperä said the handset giant will continue to integrate Ovi Share into its phones and some websites, enabling automatic uploads of photos to social media sites like Facebook and Flickr. According to PC World, Ojanperä added that the evolving role of services like Ovi Share means Nokia will continue to design hardware around software, instead of vice versa--that mindset has not always existed within Nokia's ranks, but "that is about to change and is part of this overall transformation" into a solutions-focused company.

With Nokia planning to open its Ovi Store applications marketplace sometime this month, Ojanperä forecasted that the mobile apps segment will evolve as the industry shapes it, contending that application revenues must be shared in a way that benefits both developers and businesses. He said firms that look to grab too big a share of download revenues will deter developers from creating software for that particular mobile operating system. "If the industry takes too much, there will be no interest," Ojanperä said. "It will hurt our platform." Ojanperä added that while Ovi Store aims to create a hospitable environment for developers, it will monitor application submissions to make sure they meet certain criteria: "Working with carriers, there may be some apps that are too bandwidth-intensive."

For more on Ojanperä's comments:
- read this PC World article [1]

Related articles:
Forum Nokia opens up on Ovi Store [2]
Nokia [3] Developer Summit 2009's rules of the game