Is T-Mobile Germany Feeling Threatened by Nokia’s Ovi?
by Darla Mack
Some recent announcements struck my attention and made me realize that providers not only in the US are trying to pull strings in order to get consumers back into the habit of using their services.
Something that is common practice here in the US between carrier and manufacturer has spread across to Germany and possibly (although not officially stated) other parts of Europe. T-Mobile Germany will be pulling all Nokia handsets (not that there are any available currently) that can access Nokia’s Ovi service. Their reason for doing so is clearly because they want consumers to utilize the similar services that they offer and charge for it. To sum this all up… they want to have a service branded device. Very much like the Nokia N75 offered by AT&T here.
In conjunction to this finding, Nokia has announced today during CeBIT a new carrier specific device which has taken on the model number of the olden days. The Nokia 6650 will of course be T-Mobile branded and specific to the carriers portal of services. Did anyone see this coming?
To me it seems that T-Mobile wants a piece of the pie. I’m sure Nokia didn’t project this, but then again they did accommodate them with a device. But since Ovi can be accessed from any device with a browser just what is it that T-Mobile is so worried about?
