Nokia and Vodafone announced yesterday that they signed a deal for adding Vodafone’s Internet services onto the popular Finnish mobile phone maker’s handsets. The two major companies announced this important move just days after the mobile telephony industry was hit by Google’s announcing the Open Handset Alliance. But it seems that not only the popular American company has brilliant ideas after all, as Nokia and Vodafone have just announced their intention to launch a bunch of robust mobile phone features too.

Vodafone will be however the second major operator to work with Nokia, as the Finnish company signed a similar deal a month ago also with Telefonica SA. While the partnership with Telefonica SA will enable Nokia to develop a billing system and multimedia menu to access services from providers, in the deal with Vodafone Nokia’s target is Ovi. Vodafone agreed to integrate its own mobile Internet and content services with Nokia’s new Ovi suite of Internet services.

This way, Vodafone’s customers will start having a greater choice of Internet and content services. But some of the two companies’ services will still be competing with each other, as there is some service overlap between them. So, the details about how things will actually work between Nokia and Vodafone according to the new deal are still sketchy. What is known till now is that a multimedia menu will give access to both Vodafone and Nokia’s services such as music, maps and games.

The recently announced move proves once again the power of the Finnish mobile phone maker’s brand, as well as the lack of success that the mobile operators have generally had with their own Internet services. On the other hand this move proves also that although it was received with skepticism, Nokia’s Ovi initiative is in fact a successful project.