At a special press event held at the Ministry of Sound in London this morning, Nokia introduced “Ovi” the company’s new consumer facing Internet services brand, and in doing so, took aim at Apple, its mobile carrier “partners”, and — to a lesser extent — dot com giants Google and Yahoo.
At launch, “Ovi”, which means ‘door’ in Finnish, will encompass the highly anticipated Nokia Music Store, a revamped N-Gage (Nokia’s mobile gaming platform — see our earlier report), as well as Nokia Maps, a navigation service that offers maps and city guides. The first version of Ovi.com, which can be accessed either directly from a compatible Nokia device or from a PC, is scheduled to go live in English during the fourth quarter of 2007, with additional features and languages added during the first half of 2008.
Nokia also announced two new N-Series phones, the N81 (music phone) and the Nokia N95 (8 GB). “The later with its large screen and higher storage capacity clearly is being launched as a way to ward off the Apple iPhone challenge”, writes Om Malik, over at GigaOm.
Additionally, the company gave a sneak preview of its next generation User Interface, dubbed the “Experience Suite”, which will be applied first to new N-Series devices. The Inquirer describes the UI as being iPhone-like, in which the user is able to “navigate between applications using one flick of the thumb”, and applications are found by “shuffling through various panes.”
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Over at our sister blog, Read/WriteWeb, 
DivX has officially unveiled its “Connected” media extender platform. 
On September 3rd, Microsoft will celebrate the five year anniversary of Windows Media Center, arguably one of the company’s more successful products. Windows XP Media Center Edition 
Please let this DRM-free madness stop. Just kidding.
There are a vast number of portable media players on the market. They come in all different sizes, colours and configurations, each hoping to capture the greatest market share. The iPod, which has dominated the market since its launch in October 2001, is synonymous with the portable media player, in much the same way as the Walkman and the Hoover are for the personal stereo and the vacuum cleaner. Apple have maneuvered themselves into this position by being early adopters in the market (although they were by no means the first) and by innovating with their design, features and marketing.
One company couldn’t take down Goliath, now maybe three can.
