Nokia unveiled the Ovi brand to the world a little over 4 years ago at event in London that I was lucky enough to attend. Everyone sitting in the auditorium, listening to the presentation that was being given about how the future of mobile was going to be all about devices that connect to the cloud, were really excited about the vision that being laid out. You have to remember that Apple started shipping the first iPhone just a few short months before Ovi was born. Over the next few years we saw Nokia buy all these little companies that no one ever heard of, companies like Twango (which is a clone of Flickr), Plazes (which is a clone of Foursquare), and OZ Communications (which is a generic multiprotocol instant messaging client). The goal was, and this is just a theory, to create a Nokia owned walled garden of services that would be preinstalled on every single Nokia device to leave a factory. With the company pushing over 100 million units every quarter, within no time they’d catch up to the American services that were already out there and being adopted internationally.
In May of this year Nokia announced that they failed, that the Ovi brand would be shot in the head and buried in the ground at midnight in an unmarked grave so no one would know where to look for it in the future. Since then several of the services that Nokia was offering under the Ovi labels have been put to rest. Today Ovi Contacts joins that list. The service is going to be shut down in late January, so if you’re one of the few people actually using it, now is the time to back things up.
Use Google, use Hotmail, use a notebook and a pencil for all we care, just make sure you get your numbers out before it’s too late.
[Photo above of Anssi Vanjoki, the guy should have been Nokia’s next CEO]