Making its foray into formal education services, Finnish handset maker Nokia today entered into a strategic partnership with Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) to provide certificate programmes in English language through its devices.

As per the alliance, the two organisations will pilot a Certificate Programme in Functional English (CFE) on Nokia devices supporting the Ovi Life Tools.

Nokia is already offering education services through its Life tools, however, this is for the first time that the handset maker will be offering Certificate courses.

Ovi Life Tools is a set of mobile information and application services covering crop prices, education, health, games, maps, music and entertainment.

As of now, there are about 4.7 million subscribers for the Nokia Life Tools services.

The programme will start from January next year in select districts of Maharashtra and its cost is Rs 1,900 per student.

As a part of the programme, Nokia will make available IGNOU admission forms with Nokia phones supporting Ovi Life Tools.

"As of the now, the programmes will be available on more than 12 variants of Nokia devices pricing between Rs 1,500 and Rs 6,000," Nokia India MD D Shivakumar told reporters here.

The enrolled students besides receiving the study material and related support from IGNOU will also receive daily learning content via Ovi Life Tools Services.

On completion of the programme they will get certificates from IGNOU.

Post the pilot programme, Nokia and IGNOU will jointly assimilate the learnings from the pilot project and extend it further to other programmes of IGNOU.