As some of you may or may not know, at the recent World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Nokia announced their new Ovi store (http://www.ovi.com) which is an applications store and file-sharing service for their handsets. What you should already know is that Nokia also already maintained a cool gaming service called N-Gage (the service, not the ill-fated, taco-shaped mobile gaming device of the same name). Can a handset manufacturer, even if it is Nokia, maintain two different services for applications and games? What’s the difference between them anyway? Mark was happy to fill in the blanks and answer these questions and more.

But who is Mark Ollila

At Nokia, Mark is helping drive the next generation gaming strategy. He sits on the Global Management Team for Games and is leading Nokia Games Publishing efforts. During 2008, Nokia Games Publishing has released 10 titles so far including Hooked On: Creatures of the Deep (Meffys 2008 Winner). Previously he was also responsible for technology strategy and business development, industry relations and industry marketing, partnerships and Nokia internal collaboration and technology roadmapping. He then decided publishing games was much more fun! Previous to joining Nokia, Mark was a well known entrepreneur and highly respected authority in media technology, frequently hosting lectures and publishing research on the sector. He has a PhD in Computer Vision and an MBA from London Business School. He is also a board member of the EMEA chapter of the Mobile Entertainment Forum.

So in a nutshell, he knows what he’s talking about.