Nokia recently held their Nokia World ‘08 convention in Barcelona to announce some of the their upcoming dealings and new plans for the coming year. Despite their announcement of significantly pulling out of the Japanese GSM market Nokia is still making waves in the industry with their new innovative products and way of delivering them to customers.

Systems like the Google Android Marketplace and the Apple iPhone store have been significantly changing the way people use their mobile phones and Nokia, being one of the more highly adaptive and smart market players aren’t ones to ignore those trends. Last year Nokia launched Ovi (Finnish for door) which was meant to act as a one stop shopping place for mobile users where they could find news and products. This service was offered in conjunction with carrier plans from T-Mobile and Vodafone and not as an independent service like the iTunes Apps store. Nokia is now taking great steps to expand Ovi’s services. At Nokia World ‘08 they announced Maps on Ovi as well as Mail on Ovi.

The Maps on Ovi service will be a service offered to customers who wish to plan out routes on their PCs, sync their phones up with the program and then have route plans and day trips held with them in their phones. These routes will function in tandem with built-in GPS systems and allow users to meander freely without losing their way.

The Mail on Ovi is described as a service that is going to give the world easy access to e-mail without the use of a computer. The vast majority of the world population does not have access to e-mail and Nokia is attempting to offer an alternative with Mail on Ovi. The service would allow people to create mobile e-mail accounts accessible by phone and by PC. Also still allowing full access to free online mail services such as Google or Yahoo Mail.

The Nokia World ‘08 did not stray away for what Nokia is known for. One of the big announcements that has the mobile blogosphere abuzz is the announcement of the N97. This is a powerful new slider phone with fully QWERTY keyboard and some quite impressive features. Many of the new Ovi services were made in conjunction with the N97 and demoed on that model. The GPS system coordination with the Maps on Ovi service looks impressive and is likely to wow users all around the world.

It remains to be seen how anyone is going to come out of this Global Economic Slowdown, but with Nokia thinking in big picture terms with them investing their resources into apps support such as the Ovi system, they may be a sure bet to remain on top as they have been doing so for the last few years.

How do you think they’re going to fare in this changing market? Can they keep up? Let us know what you think.