Nokia advances its mobile web push with acquisition of Twango

Twango will not have been an expensive purchase for the Finnish giant - terms were undisclosed, but speculation centered on a figure around $97m - but it brings valuable innovations in online photo and video sharing. Its service offers social networking with support for sharing 110 file types, more than mainstream players like MySpace. The buy adds to the arsenal of mobile internet tools that Nokia is building to support its push for new revenue streams and for influence higher up the value chain than the handset - at the heart of the internet model, taking on Microsoft and Google. It has carried out its own R&D efforts - the creation of the Widsets content delivery system, the focus of the company's first autonomous mobile web start-up; and the advanced work on mobile browsers, widgets, Series 60-based user interfaces and content platforms like Preminet. It is also set to make a string of acquisitions, to follow those of Twango, digital music distributor Loudeye and Germany navigation software start-up gate5.

CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo is seeking to transform Nokia almost as entirely as did his predecessor Jorma Olilla, who turned the Finnish conglomerate into a streamlined handset machine. The new chief aims to take the lead in the move to the mobile web, relying particularly on what he has identified as the key applications - location and mapping services, content delivery, collaboration and web 2.0 techniques, and multimedia, all of which will be reflected in the high end handset designs as well as in software and services that can run independently of the Nokia devices.

Last month, Kallasvuo set up a dedicated software and services division, into which Twango will now fit alongside the other mobile web initiatives. The smaller company was founded three years ago by five former Microsoft senior managers and, although its system can handle more types of media than rivals such as YouTube and Flickr, it has not - until now - attracted the same level of large player interest or distribution. Its service is free but Nokia plans to add paid-for options and will probably rebrand the offering, as well as expanding it beyond the US. It also said it would maintain its agreements with several other services in the same area - such as the Flickr photo sharing site the Vox video blogging system - in order to provide consumer choice on its handsets.

Twango has opened up its APIs to allow developers to create applications for its platform, supporting web 2.0 techniques such as mashups, and this will bolster Nokia's rapidly growing activities in apps development tools for mobile internet. On the broader software front, Nokia is winning the support of more wireless developers worldwide than any other brand, according to a new study by Evans Data. Nokia dominates in Europe and Asia-Pacific though Motorola remains stronger in North America."

Nokia has been diligent in using market information to focus on developers, and has put together a world class developer program with its Forum Nokia organization," said John Andrews, CEO of Evans Data. "This has been crucial in solidifying their developer base in Europe and successfully developing markets in Asia. These results show that their efforts are paying off."