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Nokia today showed off its MOSH service, which the phone makers hopes will make it easy for content creators--amateur and professional alike--to deliver content to any cell phone.

Core to the MOSH service is its social networking and sharing element: Subscribe to content producers you like, and that content will be available to you as soon they make something new available. It works with any phone, not just Nokia devices, and can be consumed via any Web browser-enabled device.

When you upload content, audio and images are uploaded in their original form; videos are transcoded immediately to Flash. Then, when you download from the site, you can see what content is compatible with your device--and the service will transcode files on the fly so you can view them accordingly.

Nokia is acutely aware that the future will be shaped by a combination of hardware and services. Apple already has paved that highway with its model for the iTunes Music Store and its integration with Apple's iPod players and the iPhone.

Build Your Own Content

It doesn't surprise me that mere months after Apple jumps into the cell phone market with the iPhone, that a big player in the cell phone industry is touting its new direction as well.

According to George Linardos, director of business development at Nokia, the plans for MOSH stemmed from internal discussions at Nokia that began almost a year ago. Now, he says, "we see owning an Internet service layer as a way for us to grow as a company. We're in the midst of a full-blown reorganization around that."

Nokia dubbed MOSH "The Asylum Project," he jokes, "because the idea was that we'd turn over the programming of our phones and let the inmates run the asylum, rather than trying to program the phones ourselves. Now, anyone can build their own experience to consume content on the phone. And anyone can publish content--images, videos, audio files, and applications."

Background

In a low-profile beta mode since August, MOSH has already racked up 2 million users, averaging 100,000 users per day (the site itself notes 25,000 registered users, though). The service has notched over 2 million downloads, too. Linardos describes MOSH as "an open distribution platform" for getting content to the phone via the Web.

The service so far has users in 100 countries, with India, Russia, and South Africa leading the pack. Want to know how popular your content is in a particular country? No problem: the service features what Linardos dubs the "Hasselhoff" feature--just as David Hasselhoff was huge in Germany, but not in the U.S., one of the service's analytical views lets you see where your content is most popular.

Nokia alone has 850 million phone users worldwide alone; and the company notes that across all manufacturers 350 to 400 million phones are sold per year. "As these phones become more and more enabled with Wi-Fi and multimedia capabilities, we can now deliver services to them," says Linardos.

MOSH is a Web-based experience that includes both the PC and the cell phone. Linardos says 88 percent of MOSH's downloads originate from mobile devices; and 90 percent of the uploading is happening via a computer.

Improvements to Come

By the end of October, when the service expands its breadth, Linardos says the built-in device-detecting intelligence will be improved. He expects that by then, you'll be able to share content with someone, have them follow the link to download that content, and then MOSH will be able to detect what device you're on, and store that info for future reference.

And by the end of the year, Linardos says the service should have the ability to create content at the site itself, including things like wallpaper, themes, and video mashups.