Exclusive New Research from the Telecom Leader

Survey stats * market share * real world deployments * and more

Now with two ways to buy…

      Subscribe in NewsGator Online   Subscribe in Bloglines   
   Comments

Nokia brings iPhone competitor to U.S., but will it come with music?

Nokia plans to launch the 5800 XpressMusic in the U.S. next year, but has not indicated whether Comes with Music will be included

more on the topic

More Related Articles

Nokia on Thursday announced plans for a global launch of its new 5800 XpressMusic, its touch-screen, multimedia answer to Apple’s iPhone. A first iteration will be launched in the fourth quarter of this year, and a second featuring Nokia’s Comes With Music platform will hit overseas shelves in early 2009. The U.S. is also scheduled to debut the 5800 in the first half of 2009, but it won’t necessarily come with music.

Nokia confirmed to Reuters that it would launch its Comes With Music platform in the U.S. early next year. The handset maker also said it would launch the 5800 in the U.S. in 2009, but according to a Nokia spokesperson, they have not indicated whether the 5800 will be the vehicle for the music store’s domestic debut.

Rather than focus solely on user interface design in an already crowded touch-screen marketplace, Nokia is placing its bets on Comes With Music, officially launched yesterday in the U.K. The service offers one year of unlimited downloads from the Nokia Music Store catalogue, which holds millions of tracks from the four major record labels. After the year is up, consumers will be able to keep all their downloaded songs. The business plans runs counter to Apple’s strategy of charging for songs downloaded to iTunes and has the potential to threaten wireless operators’ other pay-for-download music services as well.

Nokia has already been in the process of redefining its image a pure handset manufacturer to a services-oriented company with its Ovi platform, and 5800 Xpress Music reinforces that strategy. The touch-screen handset features a drop-down menu called Media Bar to access music and entertainment and link to the Web to access and share Flash content, as well as a socially inspired Contacts Bar that highlights favorite contacts on the home-screen and provides easy access to a digital RSS feed-style history of recent activity. The multi-modal user interface allows users to switch between a touch-screen keypad, Qwerty keyboard, pen stylus or plectrum, a guitar pic for the musically inclined.

Want to use this article? Click here for options!
© 2009 Penton Media Inc.

  • Telephony Content


blog comments powered by Disqus
Get Updates Via Email
  • Telephony Content

related resources

popular articles

Webcasts

WEBCAST

Reduce Customer Churn and Cut Costs Webcast | July 22, 2009

Learn the best practices for online customer billing and service – how to implement a paperless bill, drive traffic to your web site, improve customer service.

REGISTER NOW

White Papers

WHITE PAPER

Automated End-to-End Managed Service Delivery. Sponsored by Ciena.

Ciena’s industry-leading CoreDirector Multiservice Optical Switch with FastMesh® has been used for efficient and robust core switching in the world’s largest networks. DOWNLOAD NOW

Podcasts

PODCAST

Wikimedia explores the phone as encyclopedia

Kul Wadhwa, head of business development, Wikimedia Foundation, discusses with senior editor Kevin Fitchard the Wikipedia’s future on the mobile phone. LISTEN

Blogs

BLOG

I-feature: Readers respond

As promised, a key component of Telephony’s new Interactive Featureis reader participation READ

E-Books

E-BOOKS

Next-Generation Now: Evolve your communications services in the post-recession world.

Read New eBook.

  • Telephony Content
  • Telephony Content

commentary

Carol Wilson
Bandwidth envy

July 6, 2009

Read Now

Carol Wilson
Joe McGarvey
A Dickens of a Relationship
Problem

July 6, 2009

Read Now

Joe McGarvey

Recent Comments

Follow comments on Telephony

More ways to stay informed

Find us on Facebook

follow us on twitter

Browse Issues

  • June 1, 2009
  • October 1, 2008
  • April 1, 2009
  • March 1, 2009
  • February 1, 2009
  • January 1, 2009
  • December 1, 2008