Nokia gets a lot of heat from the press, analysts, and Wall Street for their smartphone lineup, but like Microsoft, who had a vision to put a computer on every desk, Nokia’s goal is to make a mobile phone that can go in everyone’s pocket. With the 5 billion mobile connection barrier having been broken this year, it looks like they’re succeeding. It’s not only devices that Nokia continues to make for the low end market, but they’ve also been pushing services. This isn’t your typical Western Europe, United States type services either, but things that are actually useful for people who depending on agriculture as their main source of income. The service, dubbed “Life Tools“, lets users learn English, inform mothers of how to best take care of their children, tells farmers what’s the best crop to grow and when and how much to sell the crop they’ve just harvested, and even offers a bit of entertainment in the form of jokes, horoscopes, and sport score results.
“We have made sure that the service is locally relevant. The agriculture service provides prices on 25 different commodities including cocoa, beniseed (sesame) and fish to name a few, and covers all 36 states in Nigeria. But people also want to have fun, so in football crazed Nigeria we have made sure that the news and entertainment service includes the latest results from the European leagues and from the national team. Affordability is also critical. With almost 30 percent of the population below the poverty line, every cent makes a huge difference to people’s household budgets, so we have set out to build a service that is able to further improve their quality of life for just 1 Euro per month.” – Nokia’s head of Mobile Phone Services, Dieter May
The service will be built into the Nokia 2690 and C1-01 and cost 1.25 EUR/month for the agricultural information and 1 EUR/month for everything else.
[Via: Press Release]