{"id":576977,"date":"2010-05-24T11:32:50","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T15:32:50","guid":{"rendered":"tag:contentnext.com,2010-05-24:article\/419-yahoo-and-nokia-announce-strategic-partnership"},"modified":"2010-05-24T11:32:50","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T15:32:50","slug":"yahoo-and-nokia-focus-is-on-mapping-mail%e2%80%94-but-not-advertising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/576977","title":{"rendered":"Yahoo And Nokia: Focus Is On Mapping, Mail\u2014 But Not Advertising"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Although they’ve been working together since 2004, the CEO’s of Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO<\/a>) and Nokia (NYSE: NOK<\/a>) held a press conference in Times Square to announce the details of a new level for their relationship. The news, which leaked<\/a> last week, has Yahoo providing Nokia devices with e-mail, search and services. In outlining the new aspects of the Yahoo\/Nokia alliance, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz placed particular emphasis on Nokia’s mobile mapping technology. “Yahoo lost its focus on maps a few years ago—well, not lost it, just invested in other areas, Bartz said. “By partnering with Nokia to build that up, we can still focus on other parts of the business, such as search.” She also noted that is this part of a larger plan for Yahoo to expand its existing partnerships with roughly 100 mobile companies around the world. Nokia will also help it drive growth in other markets including India and Thailand.\n<\/p>\n

Specifically, Nokia will be the exclusive, global provider of Yahoo’s maps and navigation services, integrating Nokia’s Ovi Maps across the internet company’s offerings. In return, Yahoo’s job involves becoming the exclusive, global provider of Nokia\u2019s Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services, which will be branded as \u201cOvi Mail\/Ovi Chat powered by Yahoo!\u201d<\/p>\n

The partnership with Nokia will not mean that Yahoo will forget about its iPhone, Blackberry and coming Android apps. For Nokia’s part, CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo feels that Yahoo will help it gain greater market share in the U.S. Yahoo said co-branded services will begin to become available starting in the second half of this year and with global availability expected in 2011. <\/p>\n

One area that the two will not collaborate on is advertising. Bartz and Kallasvuo both said that this is strictly about consumer services. “There is no advertising relationship in this partnership,” Bartz said, though she added that at least in directly, their work on location services will help both to better tap local marketers, an area that is increasingly important<\/a> to Yahoo. <\/p>\n

In conversation with Jason Titus, Yahoo’s VP for communications services, and Tero Ojanper\u00e4, Nokia’s EVP, services, the two discussed how adding advertising services to the arrangement was unnecessary. Essentially, if the geo-services and social media aspects of the deal work as intended, the ad dollars will flow to both companies respectively, they said. “We’re both moving aggressively in mobile advertising, and bringing the huge reach that Yahoo and Nokia have in combination, we’ll both become much more relevant to local advertisers,” Titus told paidContent. <\/p>\n

Asked whether there was a temptation to challenge Apple’s iAd mobile ad system for apps, Titus responded, “Apple (NSDQ: AAPL<\/a>) is doing a lot of interesting things, but I don’t think that anyone should regard iAd as the be all, end all of mobile advertising. The mobile space is still just burgeoning, it’s still experimental. We’ve been doing digital advertising a long time and there’s going to be a lot of different experiences for mobile ads going forward.”<\/p>\n

Nokia’s Ojanper\u00e4 said that the company will continue to use a number of advertising partners in various global markets. “What works in the U.S. is different than what works in China, so it makes sense for us to continue our existing relationships,” he said.<\/p>\n

There is one area of advertising that will see some teamwork from Yahoo and Nokia. When the unified services rollout during the second half of the year, there will be an extension of Yahoo’s ongoing branding campaign<\/a> and Nokia’s promotion of its own new devices. “There will not be a dedicated device related to the Yahoo partnership,” Ojanper\u00e4 said. “But we do have many exciting devices coming out, including the new N8 [smartphone], and we will advertise around those product launches.”<\/p>\n

In making today’s big announcement, Nokia and Yahoo needed to address the judgment that they were both being left behind by Google (NSDQ: GOOG<\/a>), Apple and even, to some extent, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT<\/a>), as all have their own mobile operating systems. The launch of these new services aren’t really about any new innovations in the space, but it certainly does help in getting both companies caught up. It may seem a little late to industry observers, but as Yahoo Titus noted, the mobile space is still pretty new for most consumers.\n<\/p>\n

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