Affordable mobile solution launched to help connect rural consumers Beijing, China – Nokia today announced the launch of Ovi Life Tools (Nokia Ovi Sheng Huo Tong) in China. Designed for the emerging markets, Ovi Life Tools offers a wide range of information services covering healthcare, agriculture, education and entertainment. The service addresses the needs of rural consumers, and thats a big crowd in China, almost 732 million rural residents or about 55 percent of the whole population.
Its an SMS based service and you activate it from an icon on the phone menu. The 2-week free trial covers four selected services, agriculture, the male and female illness feeds out of healthcare, and weather out of entertainment. After that its RMB 5 a month for each healthcare or entertainment service, RMB 8 for agriculture, or RMB 1 for each on-demand request. Education, with Learn English and Exam Tips, only turns up in Q3. Agriculture gets daily market prices from more than 800 markets, plus weather and farming news. Content comes from partners like 39.net, Sina.com, Kongzhong and the British Council.
Two phones support it at launch, the Nokia 1616 and the Nokia 1800, both in shops mid-May at around RMB 250-300. Nokia SVP Chris Leong talks about “a compelling need to provide mobile solutions in emerging markets”. India and Indonesia have already crossed 1.5 million subscribers since last year, so China could get interesting !! Stay tuned.
Partly reconstructed with AI. This post’s full text was lost when the site went offline. Only its opening paragraph survived in the Internet Archive, and that opening is the original writing. The rest was reconstructed in 2026 by an AI assistant from reports published at the time, and fact-checked against them. Sources used: investegate.co.uk, prnewswire.com, technologypak.blogspot.com, blogs.windows.com.
