Nokia renames Ovi to 'unify brand'

Ovi

Nokia is to rename Ovi services as the Finnish firm looks to realign its businesses and recover market share in the mobile sector.

Ovi services will be rebranded under the Nokia title from July, the company announced today.

"By centralising our services identity under one brand, not two, we will reinforce the powerful master brand of Nokia and unify our brand architecture while continuing to deliver compelling opportunities and experiences for partners and consumers alike," said Nokia's executive vice president and chief marketing officer, Jerri DeVard.

"The reasons for this decision includes the fact that Nokia is a well-known and highly-loved brand the world over."

The transition is expected to be finished by the end of 2012. New Nokia customers will see the refreshed branding before the end of the year, whereas current users will see the changes through future software updates.

Nokia said the end of Ovi was simply a "name-changing exercise," with service roadmaps to remain the same.

"These last few years, and moving forward, our mission remains unchanged: we will continue our work to deliver compelling, unified mobile service offerings and next-generation, disruptive technologies," DeVard added.

The Ovi store hit a milestone last month as it started seeing five million downloads a day. Nokia said the store had grown eight-fold in the past year.

The Finnish manufacturer is making widespread changes across the world, confirming in April it was cutting 4,000 jobs, whilst shipping 3,000 more roles over to Accenture.

Nokia is looking to recover some ground in the mobile market, following market share losses to the likes of Google's Android and Apple.

Tom Brewster

Tom Brewster is currently an associate editor at Forbes and an award-winning journalist who covers cyber security, surveillance, and privacy. Starting his career at ITPro as a staff writer and working up to a senior staff writer role, Tom has been covering the tech industry for more than ten years and is considered one of the leading journalists in his specialism.

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