I've been perplexed about what Nokia Ovi is for some time, and not having a Nokia handset to try it out I've left it as just 'something those Finns offer'.

Well, having participated in an online discussion with the various heads of management on the Ovi project, it seems Nokia is going to take a while to work out the best way to position it too.

From a newbie's point of view, it's pretty easy to see there are three distinct parts to the service: The Ovi Suite, the website Ovi.com and the Files On Ovi service.

No thankyou to the music

Those of you who have owned a Nokia mobile will know the Ovi Suite as a PC Suite, where you can back up, sync with Outlook and do all manner of things with your handset (just don't ever use the music management software... you'll understand if you have).

Nokia's team told me: "The Nokia Ovi Suite can be understood as the improved version of the Nokia PC Suite and Nseries PC Suite, (and) in the future Nokia Ovi Suite will be the single piece of PC Connectivity software from Nokia."

This bodes well for the future of phones, as it means there will be a universal way to manage Nokia phones regardless of its series, and may even lead to access to other handsets too, which would be a real boon to mobile users everywhere who face the hassle of switching between manufacturers and losing all their contacts etc.

And Ovi.com: the place where you can back up contacts online (in the event of PC crashage), share photos (a la Facebook and Flickr) and manage your calendar and other bits and pieces.

Integrate now!

The developers also confirmed there would be more integration with other services soon, rather than just linking to Nokia Maps, and allowing Nokia Musicstore and the N-Gage platform to be integrated too.

And Files on Ovi: a service that allows you to put files online and view and download them anywhere from your Nokia handset. Sounds great, but you have to pay for the privilege: €50 a year for 30GB of storage is a little steep for something most people don't know/care about.

So, now I've found out a little bit about the service, I'm still struggling to see the point of the whole thing right now; however, should this become a universal service throughout Nokia (a kind of Google/Facebook portal) with services and PROPER social networking on your mobile: then we'd be talking.

Turn up the volume

So come on Nokia. Let's believe what you told us on the Q&A: "We are taking quite a deliberate approach in gradually building and evolving Ovi before turning up the volume. User experience, seamlessness and performance is [sic] something we want to polish relentlessly."

Polish away my Finnish friends; just get it sewn together quickly, bring in multiple handset support and get it marketed as the massive portal it could be.

Let's bring in things like the BBC iPlayer as part of it, rather than a standalone application. Let's get it open-source so people can develop it and throw in their own applications.

Let's get some App-store style in there too (Nokia's already got one starting, so let's hope...). Come on Nokia!