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In a mirror of Nokia's flagship deal with Vodafone, T-Mobile will make Ovi available, and Nokia will make handsets that provide easy access and navigation to its own portal and T-Mobile's Web'n'Walk service, one of the most sophisticated and wide reaching of the early attempts at delivering a real mobile internet experience comparable to that on a laptop. In the Nokia-Vodafone agreement, some handsets are geared to both Ovi and Vodafone Live, but the leading cellco has also tended to differentiate the two portals more clearly, keeping Ovi mainly for its higher end smartphones and, by implication, most advanced web-using customers.

The T-Mobile agreement also highlights another factor that cellcos are starting to realize, especially in Europe - that the 'killer app' beloved of 3G business plans may have proved mythical, but it is still necessary to showcase a particularly popular application as a hook for the broader mobile internet services, the key drivers of increased mobile usage in mature markets. The difference is that this application is likely to come from a third party internet provider rather than being devised particularly for the cellco. So the Vodafone-Nokia deal was centered on their music offerings, although all the Ovi services are supported, and the T-Mobile equivalent will major on social networking, including Nokia's fledgling Mosh offering but with T-Mobile's main interest being to drive usage of its MyFaves option. This started as a calling plan for close contacts, but is being developed into a full social networking service to challenge the growing mobile presence of the majors, MySpace and Facebook.

The looking to third parties for 'killer apps' will lead to a complex mixture of brands being relevant to attracting a subscriber. Some carriers, like 3, are happy to downplay their own brand to some extent, riding on the back of making apps like Skype a central and highly visible element of their handsets. Others are still trying to brand their own portals - like Vodafone Live or T-Mobile Web'n'Walk - heavily, but are being forced to let other brands, whether web services or handsets, to have space on the mobile screen. As the application and its brand becomes as much of a draw as the phonemaker's logo per se, Nokia is aiming to control the hardware and software brands, and to deliver an experience where the app and the device are optimized for one another. This will help drive uptake of its phones, and despite its direct to consumer ambitions most of this will still go through the cellco channel for many years to come. If it succeeds in offering an integrated web service/device experience that users like, as Apple has tried to do with iPhone, it will gain even greater traction among operators, even those that would rather reduce their dependence on the market leader.

This view tends to fly in the face of the Google view of the mobile internet - that it is the same as the PC internet, with the software brands paramount and the experience consistent across networks and devices, reducing the power of companies owning those elements in the chain. This is a view that some cellcos, notably 3, have even embraced, accepting the reality of the 'bitpipe' business model that Google's vision implies for the operator. Nokia, by contrast, believes that the mobile internet can only be delivered effectively for users with specific interfaces, services and functions, which are (of course) best created by the mobile specialists and the makers of the devices.

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