Nokia shows Ovi brand the door

Nokia is to abandon its Ovi brand, the handset manufacturer said on Monday.

The company had been pushing the mobile services brand hard since its 2007 launch, but the Ovi services will rebranded as 'Nokia services' later this year. It is not clear how much of this is to do with Nokia's tie-in with Microsoft, a deal that will involve the integration of the Ovi services and content store with Microsoft's Windows Phone Marketplace.

'Ovi' means 'door' in Suomi. As of April, there were five million downloads a day of Ovi-branded applications. According to a Nokia blog post on Monday, there will be "no planned disruption to the service roadmaps" despite the rebranding, which will start with the "first services on some of the new Nokia devices in July and August", and finish by the end of 2012.

"We have made the decision to change our service branding from Ovi to Nokia," Nokia chief marketing officer Jerry DeVard said in the post. "The reasons for this decision includes the fact that Nokia is a well-known and highly-loved brand the world over. Our mobile experiences are tightly integrated with our devices — there is no longer a differentiation."

Nokia said in the post that those buying a new Nokia phone later this year will probably see the new branding straight away, while existing owners will see it through future software updates.