Club Nokia was a mobile internet digital distribution portal, similar to an

App Store An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the c ...

, operated by

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...

to provide special offers, paid-for ringtones, picture messages and game content directly to members. Following resistance from its mobile operator customers, Nokia partially closed the service and the brand became solely a consumer service and loyalty portal.

History

Club Nokia was originally launched in 1997 to provide detailed product information and support about Nokia products. In 1999 Club Nokia was developed into an integral multi-channel personalised service accessible by WAP, SMS or the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...

, spawning a new industry for the provision of mobile content. Consumers could join Club Nokia after buying a new Nokia device. To download content, users were required to purchase credits obtained from authorised Nokia dealerships. Content included additional game levels for e.g. '' Space Impact''. The picture messaging service was launched in

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

in December 1999. In 2000, Amazon partnered with Nokia to enable purchasing of books from Amazon's catalogue via Club Nokia with WAP enabled mobile phones. In August 2000, Nokia signed a deal with music publisher

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British Transnational corporation, transnational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in March 1 ...

to provide EMI-owned songs as ringtones, available from the Club Nokia website or by sending an SMS message. By November 2001, over 10 million consumers were subscribed to Club Nokia, and the enterprise was forecast to yield €1 billion in revenue by 2004. However, the EMI deal proved controversial as it placed Nokia in direct competition with the

mobile operator A mobile network operator (MNO), also known as a wireless service provider, wireless carrier, cellular company, or mobile network carrier, is a provider of wireless communications services that owns or controls all the elements necessary to sel ...

s' own branded portals, who relied on the booming ringtones market for revenue and were wary of Nokia gaining a mobile content monopoly through Club Nokia as Microsoft had done in computing software. Nokia argued customers used the carriers' mobile data to download content, but network operators remained resistant. As a result, Nokia announced in September 2004 that the service for selling ringtones would close down, never having become the commercial success it was forecast to be, and Club Nokia became solely a customer service, loyalty and news portal. On the back of investments made into Club Nokia, Nokia launched a new service Preminet to its operators, designed to distribute certified Java- and Symbian-based mobile software to make cell-phone applications easier to buy, sell, and distribute. In late 2007 the Club Nokia service was rebranded "My Nokia". Nokia launched a new direct-to-consumer service in 2006 called Nokia Content Discoverer. The term "Club Nokia" was since re-used as the name of a concert venue in Los Angeles, which has now been renamed

The Novo by Microsoft The Novo (formerly Club Nokia) is an indoor club located at L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles, California. The club's seating capacity is 2,400. History The venue opened on November 8, 2008, as "Club Nokia" with shows held by the musician Bec ...

References

{{Nokia Nokia services Mobile software distribution platforms Wireless Application Protocol

History

See also

References