Nokia to buy music distributor Loudeye

Deal worth $60 million part of plan to strengthen Nokia's multimedia and enterprise units.

The story "Nokia to buy music distributor Loudeye" published August 8, 2006 at 5:06 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[Swiss in Zurich]

Smart Move

Smart move by Nokia.
Huge userbase, larger then M$FT.
With every phone purchased one will get
$10 worth of songs for free to try out the service.
Will probably work only with Nokia phones
and the service will not need to make a profit as
revenues will come from handsets sales.

Enables Nokia to differentiate themselves vs. SonyEricsson,
Samsug and Motorola and NOT necessery compete with iTunes.
They already have a large business in Europe selling ring-tones
which did so well that providers complained about it.
Perhaps also preparing for competition from iPhone.......

Jack