Nokia E71

Yahoo and Nokia recently announced a strategic alliance on May 25, 2010. The features of the alliance are

• Nokia will become the global, exclusive provider of mapping and navigation services across  Yahoo service (powered by Ovi). This means Nokia would drive the Yahoo maps part of the business. This enables Nokia to leverage their Navteq acquisition.
• Yahoo will become the global, exclusive provider of Nokia's Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services
• users of Ovi services would be able to login to certain Yahoo services through a ID Federation

The formal agreement would be rolled out in the second half of 2010 and the final roll out will be done 2011.

Image courtesy All About Symbian

Customer benefits

How does the customer stand to gain from this alliance? Here are my thoughts

• Better, stable and robust email and char services since they would be backed by Yahoo.
• Efficient use of the Nokia phones by users since most of the data would be stored on Yahoo services therefore it would be accessible anywhere.
•   Yahoo maps stands to gain as Nokia’s mapping services are better than that of Yahoo. Moreover Yahoo Map users would be able to take their information on Yahoo maps on to their mobiles as well which is essential given the penetration and usage of hand held devices for navigation purposes.
• I’m not too sure what would be a killer if Ovi is connected to Flickr. That will give the competition a run for the money.

Overall there are advantages for the customer and the companies as well. Both the companies can concentrate on the core areas and therefore the services should be better.

Disadvantage of the tie up

There are no disadvantages which are apparent but I would like to point out a peculiar similarity between the companies. While Yahoo, who was the leader, has been beaten by Google; Nokia’s big threat is the high end phone market with Iphone and Andriod round the corner.

Both the companies have track records where they have started or bought a good service but have not done anything to add value to it. I hope both the companies do not sit on the agreement and do not go in for innovation which is necessary in this environment.

There are others who mention that Yahoo is a sinking ship and Nokia is not going to gain any advantage by associating with it. However, I would not write Yahoo off (who does not love underdogs) they can spring up a surprise or two – maybe this is what flickr needs to so that it is rediscovered as it has fading into oblivion. Do not forget out of every ten mobile phones sold four are Nokia and that is a huge market.

What is your take on the strategic tie up between Yahoo and Nokia. Please leave your thoughts in the comments.