TWIT comments on Nokia’s recent aquisitions

I really love the podcast app and I listen to and subscribe to many podcasts episodes. One of of my favorites is This Week in Tech (TWIT), a weekly podcast of the TWiT.tv network. TWIT is hosted by Leo Laporte and many other former TechTV employees, many of them from the Screen Savers. Remember them? Well, I was listening to episode number 107 and Leo Laporte (A N95 owner) mentioned the fact that Nokia has bought social networking site Twango. The guys don’t understand why Nokia is going around buying all these Web 2.0 and services company. They just can’t see the connection with their current mobile device business. Panelist John C. Dvorak thinks that this is Nokia’s way of getting out of the cellphone business by saying that Nokia has jumped from different businesses in the past and thinks that they might be doing the same thing right now.

It’s pretty simple why they are buying different (web) services. Obviously they are doing this to make some kind of a web backbone of services to compliment there mobile devices. They mention Nokia’s current acquisition of Loudeye, Gate5 and Twango. The Loudeye purchase was basically there way of going into the music business and provide Itunes-like functionality to the Nseries. Gate5 is behind the technology used in Nokia Maps available in devices such as the N95 and E90 and Twango should offer the ability to share multimedia content through their desktop and mobile devices. All of this fits nicely in Nokia current plan to offer desktop-like media sharing and social networking. Have a listen to episode 107 of TWIT (they talk about Nokia in the last 15 min of the show) and let me know what you think. Are Nokia’s recent purchases odd?