Nokia is launching an online music store in Europe and Asia to let its cellphone users buy tunes for the mobile or PC. Don’t call Nokia just a hardware supplier because the Finnish giant is now jumping into the Internet services market.
Digital Journal — Nokia wants to play with the big boys, launching an iTunes rival that would allow Nokia cellphone users to easily buy music. The Nokia Music Store will launch across Europe and Asia in late 2007, but this announcement is a sign of how Nokia wants to tweak its brand offerings.
The Nokia Music Store aims to turn cellphone into music players (sound familiar, iPhone owners?). Containing millions of tracks, the store allows you to buy the song directly or add a tune to download later. Individual tracks will costs one euro and albums will costs 10 euros. A monthly subscription for PC streaming will also cost 10 euros.
Tommi Mustonen, the head of Nokia’s music activities, said in a statement: The Nokia Music Store brings together a powerful combination of great music and great devices in an easy to use way. You can select from a huge range of music, including local music from your country, and download it directly to your Nokia device.
The store’s useful features include music recommendations based on songs you already bought, and a genre-based instant playlist option. Tracks are delivered in 192Kbps audio in Windows Media Audio (WMA) format.
The eventual launch of the Nokia Music Store supports the company’s commitment to Internet services. The store will be part of the Ovi umbrella, which allows consumers to access various online content. The online portal opens the door to gaming and maps using the Nokia brand, and Engadget recently reported on how Nokia dubs this new all-in-one service:
[Ovi would] integrate new user interface elements, service suites and web communities into an open environment.
Since Nokia is known as a hardware giant, a venture into software will be new ground for the company to breach. Launching an online music portal, for instance, will allow Nokia to muscle into a market dominated by one impressively shiny Apple.
Tech analyst Ben Wood told CNN:
There are around 200 to 250 legitimate music stores online but Apple controls about 75% of sales. The music industry is going to embrace this because it will encourage competition. What Nokia is also trying to do is introduce the concept of digital music downloads to people that haven’t even heard of iTunes, in places such as India and Sub-Sahara Africa, where there are huge populations but where they don’t have a computer.
Already, Finland-based Nokia is setting itself apart from rivals Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola. It’s integral for any reputable brand to continue to innovate, to display a penchant for change in the ever-evolving tech world. Going up against iTunes might be suicide, some tech observers would say, but it’s also a David-versus-Goliath tale that could have a fairy tale ending.
