This comes as a surprise: a good-news story about Nokia’s services strategy, sort of. The Finnish handset giant now has 86 million users for its mobile internet services, beating its own target of 80 million users, according to this report from Reuters.
But this is only a small silver lining to a bigger cloud: the company counts as active users every consumer who has used a service just once over the last six months. And considering that there are an estimated 1.1 billion Nokia (NYSE: NOK) users worldwide today, this is a far cry from critical mass.
The 86 million figure was supposedly broadcast on TV screens in its corporate offices, although the company has not confirmed the information.
Nokia has big ambitions for Ovi and the rest of its internet services division. By 2011, it aims to have 300 million users and make $2.89 billion in revenues in the process. Some executives have even suggested that it might even sell of its handset division to focus on services. In December Nokia said it was getting one million downloads per day and that it was getting ready to relaunch the store.
But up to now, the numbers have not added up. Music services and navigation were marked to account for a third each of those revenues, but last year it emerged that only 107,000 users had signed up in the first nine months in the nine countries where it launched.
Other divisions, such as its gaming business N-Gage and the photo-sharing site, have been shut down. Ovi had only 10 million users in its first three months.
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