Nokia Comes with Music US launch smartly pushed back to 2010
Not that most Americans could care, but Nokia is pushing back the US launch of its DRM-laden Comes with Music service into 2010. CWM, you'll recall, is Nokia's "free" all-you-can-eat music service that bundles the 12-18 month music subscription cost into the inflated handset price -- although like any DRM music scheme, solutions already exist to break the CWM shackles. The delay is probably a wise move considering the weak state of Nokia's US partnerships required to offset consumer costs, lukewarm response to its latest handsets, and the fact that most US consumers share a broad distaste for DRM music. We'd rather see Nokia launch late but with a compelling proposition than launch now in blind adherence to a timeline.






















Really Nokia? Do you really want to play this game? The market is too crowded in the US already (iTunes store, Amazon, Rhapsody, Zune marketplace, etc), and the competitors are already on the market for years. I don't get it why Nokia is trying to do this now. Can they just focus on marketing their unlocked devices in the US?
I agree
This is a different offer as you pay once for unlimited music downloads... This is a solution lot of people asked for in Europe.
Nokia is trying hard to throw some darts and see what sticks because they are feeling heat from iPhone and
they can't seem to find anything to response. This attempt too will be wasted.
Nokia has allways thrown darts, its nothing new.
If a company releases 20++ different models a year they can't and won't except every and all ones to be hits. I'd guess they expect 2-3 to sell poorly, but then, one of them might be a hit. You never know 100% sure.
The whole n770-n900 line is one of these darts. The first model probably didn't bring in even the development costs.
See, I love these 'Nokia is feeling the heat from the iPhone' posts. Have any of you actually looked at the iPhone's sales outwith the US? Have you then compared them to Nokia's? Increased market share doesn't really mean world dominance when the majority of that increase comes from a market where there wasn't really a smartphone market of any real note two to three years ago and where the dominant player doesn't operate.
Which is not to say that Nokia shouldn't pay attention to the iPhone because there's a lot to learn from it and their recent flagship devices - the N96 and N97 - have been, frankly, poor. The N900 looks awesome though and their mid-range smartphones are unsurpassed for features and value which is why they dominate the industry and why they sold about 3 million more units quarter on quarter last report despite market share going down (because, as mentioned, of the growth in the US where they have no presence).
But hey, let's just make a tired remark about resistive touchscreens and move on, eh?
@Mark,
LOL, spot on! Let the sheeps be sheeps!
"and the fact that most US consumers share a broad distaste for DRM music"
No engadget, if that was true, itunes would have been buried years ago, maybe you don't remember over there but itunes got DRM free only a few months ago.
Yep, it's called iTunes +.
i believe most US consumers just found ways around DRM. buy a conversion kit online, and rip off music from the man.
Agreed. The US consumers would probably be the last market to share a broad distaste for DRM music.
In the US Nokia may have a big job of getting market share but anywhere else Nokia is the one holding all the keys. If they do it right (which is a big IF), nobody can stop them: 13 devices each second, over one million devices in a day.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that tomorrow brings some news about Nokia's services (including services with some sort of audio/video aspect).
Spot on. Once again in his rush to slag off all things Nokia Thomas gets things wrong.
No change there then.
iTunes is a great music store, but I think most of us avoided buying from it due to DRM. Note how fast Amazon's store took off when they came out with DRM free music, despite being not quite as slick as iTMS? Note how fast iTMS came out with DRM-free music once Amazon did?
While there are plenty of people who will buy DRM'd music and either don't know or don't care, I think there's still a huge popular resistance against it -- far larger than just our smaller community of folks who understand what DRM is.
This is going nowhere.
Nokia should be concentrating full time on the brilliant maemo 5 and on the new phones that look dam promising.
Oh look, a snarky Nokia post...must've been a day or even two since the last!
Nokia world tomorrow, so you won't have to wait long for next one.
I'm glad that DRM still exists in some form to hold up as an example of how much it fails.
So many misinformed and ignorant people making comments about Nokia not knowing what they are doing or "feeling the heat from iPhone".
Get over yourselves. The iPhone is a small player in the global market. It's popularity is mainly in the USA where people are willing to compromise on control and features then make exscuses for why their handset is so lacking compared to other options.
Nokia's Comes with Music is fantastic value and the expressmusic is selling in my country for S$450 or roughly USD$300. That's for 1 million songs worth of music. It's worth it just for the songs and works out to a ridiculous fraction of a cent per song. How much are you payign per song on iTune?
On top of that you get a touchscreen phone. Tell me that isn't fantastic value? Or would you consider paying USD$3000 for an iphone over 3 years for half witted functionality and draconian controls from Big Brother Apple aong with poor exscuse after poor exscuse with terrorism thrown in for poor functionality as a valuable purchase decision?
And if that isn't to be beaten, you get FREE online synch, free 10Gig filestorage through ovi, media share, free pushmail, calendering etc... FREE!
Come on... tell me iPhone is somehow "better". This little low end touchscreen phone with "comes with music" alone is more than the iPhone can ever be. Nothing can cure ignorance.
Actually the iPhone's global phone marketshare weakness is more representative of the fact that smartphones are a very small minority of cell phones sold today. I guess your ignorant fanboy attitude is best summed up by the last line of your post.
I made no mention of marketshare. Popularity does not always = market share. And even if I did, what difference does it make except to shed light on the fact that for such an "advanced" phone, Apple still isn't the market leader after 3 years in it's SMARTPHONE category. Whether that category is a small subset of the whole market doesn't matter a bit. So you went off a whole different tangent there and still managed to be wrong. How's that for ignorance?
If you really think that an honest assesment of the value of Nokia's Come's with Music is fanboi talk then so be it. The reality is, for its intended target market, it is fantastic value. Argue against that.
Nokia: So much brains, so little innovation. Sad.
Right. One word reply to that: Maemo.
How's a $300 UNLOCKED smartphone overpriced????? You must mean compared to the $199 iPhone + 2 year contract deal right???? LMFAO!
Nokia is not the only one that comes with music. ;)
Nokia cums with music.
Nokia - US consumers are boycotting Nokia following their disgraceful support of the Iranian regime. For a few million bucks Nokia happily sold their users to death, torture, rape and imprisonment.
Are those apps from Ovi?