Nokia has acquired key building blocks for Ovi over time. The public beta was released on 28 August 2008. Ovi was announced on 29 August 2007 at the Go Play event in London. The transition began in July 2011 and will finish by the end of 2012. On, Nokia announced the discontinuation of the Ovi brand and the services rebranded under the main Nokia brand. As of July/August 2011, there were exactly 10.0 million downloads every day, also 158 developers reached over 1 million downloads for their Applications. Ovi was a move into the world of Internet services, where Nokia faced competition with Microsoft, Google and Apple. With the announcement of Ovi Maps Player API, Nokia has started to evolve their services into a platform, enabling third-parties to make use of Nokia's Ovi services.
Nokia's aim with Ovi is to include third party developers, such as operators and third-party services like Yahoo's Flickr photo site. Nokia focuses on five key service areas: Games, Maps, Media, Messaging and Music. The Ovi services could be used from a mobile device, computer (through Nokia Ovi Suite) or via the web. Ovi by Nokia (Finnish: ovi 'door' ) was the brand for Nokia's Internet services.
