Why Nokia bought a photo and video sharing site

The common sense view of Nokia is that it is a mobile phone manufacturer. Those who look a little closer note that is about as close to the truth as describing it as a rubber boot manufacturer (which it once was...).

The deal to buy Twango (click here for report) is extremely revealing. Nokia is clearly positioning itself as a media company - the definition of which stretches by the day.

The Twango deal (an image and video sharing site with fantastic mobile accessibility) makes obvious sense when you also consider that Nokia is the world's biggest manufacturer of cameras (yep, the ones integrated in your converged handset).

They also believe themselves to be manufacturers of computers (yep, once again, that converged device somewhere very close to you right now).

And the appetite to see themselves as a media company is clarified when you note that Gerard Wiener, is the company's vice president of multimedia mergers and acquisitions.

A Nokia phone user can snap photos or videos while at a sporting event and have those images integrated with their online photo collection at Twango's Web site. It works the other way too - so you can view images from your pc on yoru mobile (a la Orb).

And all deployed through your (Nokia) Widset for fast internet access perhaps? And with Nokia Adservice ads against it?

Make no mistake, Nokia is in the game.