Nokia looking to get into mobile search, meets with UK company Taptu
By Stefan Constantinescu on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 1:18 PM PST In Ovi
Nokia is getting pretty serious about offering services to the consumer, but are they actually considering competing with Google (NSDQ: GOOG)? Taptu CEO Steve Ives, former VP of Business Development of Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) Europe, went to Nokia House in Finland on September 11th to talk about their product:
Taptu is a new search engine, focused on providing the best mobile-friendly results. Since the company was founded in 2005, we’ve been looking for ways to make our own mobile life more interesting, colourful and user-friendly. We crawl the web and create handy little summaries, giving you a snapshot of the results without having to visit the site.
The service is in stealth right now, give them your email and you will be notified when you can try their product. I wish him the best of luck, especially considering the fact that he is advertising his search engine with a Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) W880i.
Uhm- Nokia has been “into” mobile search for a while now. http://mobilesearch.nokia.com
Steven
They’ve been leveraging yahoo’s assets and other third parties, true. What about developing an in house solution?
We all saw the patent a few months ago: http://www.unwiredview.com/2007/03/30/look-out-google-nokia-is-working-on-its-own-mobile-search-engine/
Nokia’s mobile search has been integrated with yellow pages and some yahoo listings if im not wrong.
Dunno how Nokia’s deal with Microsoft for Live services will impact the scene
Morning Stefan,
Actually, I’m the one who was lucky enough to pop by the Nokia offices, not Steve. As you can see from my N800 puppy video, it wasn’t the most serious of visits either
As for why we use that Sony Ericsson phone? We want to let future users know that you don’t need the top of the line phone to use our service. We’re here to cater to any phone with a browser, whether you’ve got the latest N95 or an older device.
Hope you’ve signed up for the beta, and drop me a line if you have any questions.