Nokia has announced the launch of WidSets, a consumer service that delivers Internet content to mobile handsets. WidSets expects to sign up one million registered users by the end of the month.
WidSets is a handset-agnostic service that brings the best of the Internet, such as communities, news, blogs, reviews, and weather reports straight to the mobile phone. It uses mini-applications called widgets to deliver up-to-date Internet content to mobile phones and enables the user to create their own widgets. WidSets was born out of Nokias Emerging Business Unit and represents a first step in Nokias vision of mobilising the Internet.
WidSets service is free, and the easiest and most enjoyable way for mobile phone users to keep in touch with the content, blogs and communities they love, because the service is constantly updated with feedback from the users, says Ulla Srkikangas, Director of Consumer Internet Services at Nokia Emerging Business Unit. Nokia, by driving WidSets, wants to offer people a growing variety of ways to access and interact with the web from mobile devices.
Nokia believes that the future of the Internet and the mobile Internet is its communities, so WidSets will tap into existing communities and build its own, around peoples content interests and needs. The widgets deliver an alert when someone posts a comment to a blog, informs the user about a traffic jam, and make it possible to play games and interact with individual web communities from the mobile phone. The WidSets library currently has more than 1300 widgets, But if the user cannot find their favourite website in the library, there are straightforward templates that make it easy for people to create their own widget.
Using widgets opens up the mobile Internet to a large community of developers worldwide says Martin Garner, Director of Wireless at analyst Ovum. This will enable many more useful applications to be developed for mobile phone users faster, and with lower risk than before.
WidSets has evolved its social networking service further and developed new sharing features for email and private chat. The WidSets Email widget notifies the user of any new emails and includes simple read and delete functions. It currently supports a wide variety of email systems, by enabling communication using standard IMAP4 and POP3 protocols. The WidSets Private Chat widget is an online chat room controlled by the user. This could be for a group of friends, family, or even work mates.
The UK-specific widgets in the WidSets library include Foreca, a weather forecasting service for European cities; Properazzi, a property-watch service; Fotolog, the photographicsocial networking site; and the Netvibes Ecosystem of more than 85,000 Netvibes feeds.
WidSets works on a wide variety of mobile phone brands and is compatible with more than 300 mobile devices. Users can download the application from the WidSets website, or via the mobile web at get.widsets.com. In addition, UK-based owners of the Nokia N73, E50, E60, E61, E61i and E65 handsets can get started with WidSets via the Download folder on the handsets menu. WidSets will be rolled out to more devices during the second half of 2007.