Nokia presents ‘Comes With Music’ or shall we say ‘Goes Without Music’?
December 6, 2007 by Dario Soltani
Nokia just announced the ‘Comes with music’ program at Nokia World 2007 in Amsterdam.The ‘Comes with music’ program basically means people will be able to buy a Nokia device with a year of unlimited access to 2 million and growing tracks from UMG (Universal Music Group). I have not find any information on this, but I strongly believe Nokia will use the Nokia Music Store in order to deliver all these tracks to the users. I love the idea, buy a phone and have access to million of tracks instantly! No need to download them i..*cough*..lly anymore, wohoo! Great initiative Nokia, you’re now changing the way we download music.
But of course Nokia is not doing this just because they want us - the users - to listen to lots and lots of music for free. No there’s something far more bigger going on here, but before we get into that I’ll need to give you some basic facts and background info.
Know this:
- 1000 million cellphones are sold per year worldwide, most of those do play music.
- 100 - 150 million digital music players are sold per year worldwide, the digital music player market is believed to have reached it’s peak, now more and more people use other devices to listen to music (such as their phones).
I’ve discussed this in an earlier post called ‘The future of mobile User Interfaces and the post iPhone era?‘, which might be interesting. To make things short these facts basically means if you intend to make business with mobile music, you’d probably want to look at cellphones. Apple knows this, that’s why they made an iPod which also can make calls - I’m talking about the famous iPhone of course! Other manufacturers have also noticed this, such as Nokia with the N81 or the XpressMusic series, Sony Ericsson with their Walkman® series and Motorola releasing the Z8 (aka. the multimedia monster).
The Apple Threat
Apple has shown the mobile industry they both talk the talk and walk the walk. Not only do they deliver a superb user interface with iPhone, but also a decent device (yes it’s not good, it’s decent). It’s amazing how Apple manages to sell the iPhone with it’s price tag of US$400 PLUS a monthly fee of US$60, making a minimum cost of about about US$1100 for a two year contract with AT&T.
I mentioned Apple talks the talk, public relations and marketing is what Apple does best, and design of course all going hand-in-hand. That’s why everybody’s talking about the iPhone and that’s also why people want the iPhone. How many of your friends know about the iPhone? How many of them have heard about the Nokia N95 8GB? Not that many huh?
The iPhone has been good for the mobile industry. After the initial chock company’s are beginning to understand how good design, a user friendly interface and great marketing is equal to profit. Now it’s no longer a question of investing money on a good user interface, it’s about delivering what the users demand. iPhone has been educational, both for users, developers and manufacturers.
That’s why the whole industry is trying to adjust and adapt to this new threat, afraid of losing market shares to one of the giants in mobile music. Recent reports also indicate people use the iPhone to browse the web more than any other mobile device in history (except for computers of course!). This tells us people like to browse the web with an iPhone. Don’t get me wrong, I love my N95 8GB, but browsing the web should be smoother..err…I mean the whole OS (operating system) and UI (user interface) needs to be changed to work smoother and be more intuitive.
The iPod, the iPhone, iTunes and all those other i’s yet to come are here to stay, fo’ shizzle my friends… Apple is huge in delivering music to mobile devices. It all started with the iPod which is a huge success, the iPod alone changed the way people listen to music, maybe not for you and me but for a lot of people out there. I myself first understood the iPod impact when I saw a +50 female social worker using an iPod mini as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
By now most of you hardcore Nokia fans have started thinking this Dario guy talks a lot of BS, this could of be the case but before you judge me, remember I mentioned Apple walks the walk? Here’s the hard figures.
Apple facts Q4 2007
- Apple reported a quarterly revenue of US$6.22 billion (Q4 2007) and an annual revenue of US$24 billion in 2007.
- The iPod alone counts for US$1,62 billion of that cash, thats 26% of Apple’s total revenue!
- There are at least 119 million iPods out there worldwide as of October 2007.
- There are about 2 million iPhones sold as of December 2007.
- The iTunes store reports they’ve sold over 3 billion music tracks as of July 31st 2007.
- These devices together with the iTunes store make a serious threat to Nokia’s devices.
After all, Apple - just like any company - wants to dominate the business segment they’re involved in. That includes the way we listen to music and the way we use our phones. They’ve seen the smartphone future, the fast data transfers and all the possibilities (read $$$) these devices bring.
[Source: Apple.com]
Nokia adjusting strategies
Nokia of course is not an inexperienced small company with no clue of what’s going on. The truth is Nokia makes more money than Apple, with an expected annual revenue of about US$70 billion for 2007 (I personally believe US$65 billion is a more likely scenario without getting into details), which is about three times more than Apple.
[Source: Reuters.com]
2007 has been a hectic year for Nokia, launching several new services such as
The Music Store enabling users to listen and download music to their devices- Cooperate with famous artists such as Kylie Minogue delivering their music digitally before it’s even available in stores!
- WidSets allowing people to share and enjoy internet content using widgets
- MOSH being a multimedia distribution platform where users can share videos, images, games and applications to a global community
- Nokia Maps as a part of their location based experiences allowing users with to navigate and search (which also has been improved with A-GPS functionality)
- The N-Gage platform which makes it possible for users to get together and play games,
- and perhaps most importantly Nokia’s new portal, Ovi - which gathers all Nokia’s internet services in one place and makes it easy for users to find and share what they need, directly from the device (Ovi will be what the ‘multimedia menu’ is today), a PC or using the Internet, no more copying your contacts to a new device, just store them using Ovi!
Nokia’s also been busy developing a lot of new devices. In 2008 S60 Touch will become available the new touchscreen user interface which very much reminds of Apple’s OS X interface used in the iPhone.
The roundup
All is good, Apple got the OS X, Nokia has access to S60 Touch. Apple has iTunes, Nokia answers with The Music Store. Apple only use Widget applications and games (and will soon release their SDK), Nokia delivers WidSets and Symbian has offered their SDK for long. Apple and Google are allied and deliver content such as YouTube clips and maps (Google is YouTube’s owner), Nokia offers MOSH and Nokia Maps. Apple has no gaming platform (widgets suck for advanced gaming), Nokia’s got N-Gage. Nokia is also packeting all their products in a nice little package known as Ovi, making it easy for users to understand what it’s all about, something Apple always has done.
At the moment it’s really hard to tell the future. Apple can become very successful in the mobile industry if they succeed to grow beyond the American market (so far they have not done to well in Europe) and deliver more powerful devices. Nokia on the other hand is already a powerful competitor with ~40% of the total cellphone market. Just like Apple has problems in Europe, Nokia has problems getting their products accepted in North America. Nokia’s smartphone market also relies much on the coming S60 Touch interface, which really needs to be as smooth as Apple’s OS X.
At the same time one of Apple’s biggest allies, Google is developing it’s own operating system and will release a new ‘Android’ device in 2008. There’s also Apple’s archenemy Microsoft and the Windows Mobile platform, which now is starting to shape up. The Microsoft brand could be strong enough to rely on it’s reputation more than it’s usability and they’re doing good right now. There’s also Motorola and Sony Ericsson whom joined forces to develop the UIQ user interface for Symbian, trying to ride the Symbian wave, of course those companies depend on Symbian’s success which so far has been great, but there’s still the question of S60 Touch, why use a UIQ platform when we’ll get S60 Touch?
2008 will be a very interesting year for the mobile industry, whether you’re a developer or a manufacturer, limits will be pushed as they all strive to deliver the best products and experiences possible. The only certain winners in these battles are the users.
this is the kind of “big picture” articles i higly value. excellent job!
Superb!
If you’re been an Apple follower for many years, you’ll have come to learn that Steve Jobs is a man on a mission. That mission is for Apple to have a bigger impact on the lives of this generation than anyone alive.
To that end, Apple must produce a range of products that transform peoples lives for the better.
The Macintosh was a taster of things to come, the iPod was an ‘ovi’ into the hearts of a generation, the iPhone is the real deal, THE platform by which Apple can change the world.
Apple’s revenue sharing deal is so smart that it might just allow Apple to give away iPhones by the end of next year. Once that happens, a 20% or 30% market share is surely only a couple of years away.
As an Apple and Nokia fan, next year’s coming battle between the two, is looking to be wonderfully exciting, and good for the industry!
Thanks guys
Hi James
Good to hear from you.
I understand Jobs, otherwise I wouldn’t even mention a manufacturer who’s sold 2M phones, thats nothing compared to Nokia… I’m not an Apple fanatic, however I do have to acknowledge the impact the have on the market. I also love the OS X platform, just because it works the way it’s intended - and that’s something Apple should get credit for, making things work the way they’re intended.
The iPhone is as of yet not a perfect device but I’m sure they’ll make the proper adjustments with the iPhone 2. As you said, its good for the industry, we need some new blood
Your welcome! Keep writing excellent articles like this one and you can’t really go wrong!
I wish I had more time…