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Everybody likes to get something for free, as Nokia is well aware. That is why the world leader in mobile phones sales is giving application-thirsty smart phone users free music and free maps — and in the process, giving BlackBerry and iPhone a run for their money.

For many Indonesians, a BlackBerry or an iPhone top the list of things they simply can’t live without.

The first thing many people do when they wake up in the morning is grab their smartphone and check Twitter and Facebook, and the last thing they do at night is have a final look for any new e-mail.

Indonesians young and old never leave home without their BlackBerry, which has certainly become the smartphone of choice here.

But Nokia, a mobile phone producer from Finland, is wants to stake its own claim here with its Ovi Internet service.

“Our future is Ovi solutions,” Chris Carr, Nokia’s vice president for sales in Southeast Asia-Pacific, told a news conference during a Nokia showcase in Bangkok last week.

Carr said Nokia was ready to compete with smartphone producers such as Apple, which produces the iPhone, and Research in Motion, which produces the BlackBerry.

Ovi was launched in the middle of last year and there are currently more than one million applications being downloaded from Nokia’s apps store every day.

According to the US-based research firm Gartner, Nokia sold 441 million phones in 2009, good for 40 percent of the global mobile phone market.

For years Nokia’s products were best known for their easy-to-use features. And Nokia’s slogan, “Connecting People,” seemed to translate as “Conquering the Market.”

But an easy-to-use cellphone means nothing in a world of applications and cool communications gadgets. At the moment smartphones rule the market — no one wants a phone that they can’t use to check e-mail, update their Facebook status and read news headlines. And in Indonesia BlackBerry does all that the best, which has made it the market leader.

According to Gartner, global smartphone sales in 2009 reached 172.4 million units, up 23.8 percent from 2008.

And although globally Nokia is still the mobile phone industry leader — including in the smartphone stakes — companies like Apple and RIM are moving in, controlling 14.4 and 19.9 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, respectively.

“Ovi” is Finnish for “door,” and Nokia says the name reflects its desire to provide opportunities or doorways for its customers.

Ovi itself encompasses Nokia’s Internet services, including the Ovi Store, Ovi Music, Ovi Maps and Ovi Mail.

Ovi Store is Nokia’s version of the Apple store, where users can download applications and games. And just like the Apple Store, some of the applications and games come for free while there are others that users must pay for.

When asked whether Ovi was imitating the Apple Store, Carr denied that this was the case. “What makes us different is our local content in each country,” he said in an interview with the Jakarta Globe after the news conference.

Carr said Nokia had been working with students from the Bandung Institute of Technology in West Java to develop local applications for customers in Indonesia. He added that Nokia had collaborated with more than 5,000 application developers from all over the world.

One thing that makes Ovi stand out for music lovers is that it provides the potential for unlimited free downloads.

A device called Comes With Music allows customers to download as much free music as they want from Ovi Music and — unlike with other online music services — they can keep the tracks on their device forever.

There are more than nine million tracks in the Ovi Music catalog from record companies Universal, Sony BMG, Warner Music and EMI. The average person using Comes With Music downloads 500 free songs in the first few weeks of using the service — this would cost about $600 on Apple’s iTunes.

Alternatively, users without the Comes With Music device can purchase tracks individually from the A La Carte Music Store, which is available on Ovi Music.

Comes With Music is already available in 27 countries, and Carr said Ovi Music would become available in Indonesia in April. He described Indonesia, with its population of some 235 million people, as a market with untapped potential.

Ovi Maps, which Nokia says has been downloaded by three million users worldwide, is another compelling — and free — enticement to go Nokia.

Jukka Hosio, Nokia’s director of services marketing, said GPS technology was becoming an increasingly important factor for mobile phone users.

“It may not be that popular in developing countries like Indonesia, but we’re sure that it will be soon.”

Nokia’s Ovi Maps includes car and pedestrian navigation features, including turn-by-turn voice guidance for 74 countries in 46 languages, traffic information for more than 10 countries and detailed maps of more than 180 countries.

Regina Hutama Poly, the corporate communications manager for Nokia Indonesia, said Nokia users in Indonesia could already enjoy this feature for free. She added that the system was able to give highly accurate navigation information even for Indonesia’s famously confusing streets.

“This is a revolutionary application that no other company can provide,” Regina said.

Nokia claims that Ovi Maps is 10 times faster than Google Maps. For a 20-kilometer coverage, Ovi Maps only requires 200 kilobytes, while Google Maps needs 20 megabytes.

And then there is Ovi Mail. Carr said that Ovi Mail was a solution for the millions of people in the world who have limited access to a computer and land-line Internet connection.

Carr said Ovi Mail now boasted more than six million accounts, which is impressive considering the program was only launched a little over a year ago. He added that Indonesia had the highest number of Ovi Mail users in the Asia Pacific.

“We will keep developing Ovi Mail so that we can compete with e-mail providers such as Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail,” Carr said.