Nokia and Yahoo! have announced the formation of a strategic partnership — on a global scale — that will, “leverage each others’ strengths in e-mail, instant messaging and maps and navigation services, to provide consumers with access to world-class experiences on both PC and mobile devices.” The newly formed alliance will work to meld the strengths of each company:
- Nokia will be the exclusive, global provider of Yahoo!’s maps and navigation services, integrating Ovi Maps across Yahoo! properties, branded as “powered by Ovi.”
- Yahoo! will become the exclusive, global provider of Nokia’s Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services branded as “Ovi Mail / Ovi Chat powered by Yahoo!”
- Nokia and Yahoo! plan to work on ID federation between their services, beginning by making it easy for people to use their Ovi user IDs across select Yahoo! properties to easily access the online content and services they need.
Co-branded services are expected to show up in the second half of 2010 and globally in 2011. What do you think? Will the move make Yahoo! and Nokia more capable of fighting off other companies who are gaining momentum in their respective spaces *cough* Google *cough*? We’ve got the full release all lined up for you.
