No matter what some people say, Nokia is by far one of the best cell phone manufacturers out there. And it’s the Finns’ desire to provide customized software and various services to their customers that amazes me. The company keeps rolling out new phones and it keeps rolling out software for them.

Today Nokia launched the public beta version of Mail on Ovi. You can use your S40 handset to get a free email account and start mailing all your friends. Until now the beta was restricted to Malaysia, India and the Philippines but starting today it’s available worldwide and it comes with support for about a dozen languages.

Mail on Ovi is said to be similar to any PC-based email account. It will work an at least 110 million S40 phones sold in 2008 only. The number should actually be higher since these stats cover only the first 10 months of the year. And it’s 35 the number of different S40 handsets that can be used to run the beta mail service.

Why is Nokia going through all this trouble? Well why do companies bother in general? Money of course! Nokia doesn’t keep a secret the fact that it wants to make at least 2 billion euros annually starting with 2011 from Internet services like navigation, music, games, messaging and media. And they’re on the right track in my book!

via TechCrunch