Understanding that the mobile content model is shifting from pull to push, vendors are lining up with services that will bring this paradigm to mobile phones. Nokia isn’t the only one (other companies have shown me similar approaches in the pipeline that cleverly mix push and personalization), but it is the first out of the gates with a full-fledged and free-of-charge service and that counts for a lot. WidSets effectively provides users “automatic mobile access to website content” by enabling multicasts of preferred RSS feeds and user-generated content, Nokia says. This is possible because the user interface is based on mini-applications called widgets that are designed to perform common tasks such as receiving information from websites users like to visit. Since the service runs on Java-enabled mobile phones, and not just Nokia devices, it potentially gives content providers and producers of user-gen content a much wider reach. “Whenever the information on a community, blog or news service is updated, the widget notifies the user about it so that the information can be viewed right away, regardless of where the user is located,” Dieter May, Nokia’s VP and Head of Emerging Business Unit, said in a press statement. To start users off on their discovery of this brave new Mobile Web 2.0 world, Nokia provides them a Content Library where they can choose from RSS feeds, blogs, and photo-uploading sites.  The service also works in collaborative filtering (the approach that also provides the basis for Amazon’s people-like-you-liked-this model), which harnesses the tastes of users, and the wider mobile community, to suggest similar and relevant content to users.
Nokia has also announced it is working with Orange to drive device customization and strengthen the role of Symbian S60 devices in Orange’s device portfolio, which includes devices that run on Microsoft’s competing operating system. The collaboration is billed as part of Orange’s ongoing Signature strategy, which is aimed at delivering a consistent customer experience across the operator’s range of devices, the companies say.