Most of Microsoft's announcements Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona were leaked weeks ago, so there weren't any big surprises.
Now where the heck's the Zune icon on this thing?
(Credit: Microsoft)There's a new mobile OS, Windows Mobile 6.5, that's supposed to be friendlier than the notoriously clunky earlier versions. (ZDNet's mobile maven Matthew Miller is still disappointed.)
There's a set of cloud-based services for synchronizing data like contacts and photos. (Although apparently v.1 will not be connected with the Windows Live or Live Mesh platforms or services, so the vision of unified data sync across devices is still a whiteboard drawing as far as Microsoft products and services are concerned.)
There's a marketplace for Windows Mobile apps. There's a brand change--the phones will be called "Windows Phones," although the OS is still "Windows Mobile." (Confused?) Oh, and the company has finally acknowledged that competing in the consumer space is important, a year and a half after CEO Steve Ballmer dismissed the iPhone as a "$500 subsidized item" that had "no chance" of gaining any significant market share.
Assuming that any of this makes you want to run out and buy a Windows Mobile phone, too bad. None of it's available until late this year.
I'll give Microsoft some credit for envisioning and beginning to build a free alternative to Apple's MobileMe service. And the mobile marketplace is a no-brainer. But Monday's announcements just underscore that Microsoft has no answer to the iPhone.
... Read moreI stopped by the packed Nokia booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to get an update on the Nokia Music Store announced over the summer. It's already online in the U.K. (PC only), with a library of nearly 3 million songs.
Will the Nokia Music Store PC app be as attractive (and popular) as its CES booth?
(Credit: Matt Rosoff)The Web-based store looks fairly standard. But according to the folks at the booth, later this year Nokia will launch an associated desktop PC application that promises some unique features, including the ability to transfer songs directly from the store to an attached phone via drag and drop (no stop on the PC necessary), and over-the-air sync of playlists from the phone (created on the fly) to the PC. Interesting, but I still think selling DRM-protected WMA files is going to be a problem for it.
Yesterday, top cellphone maker Nokia announced Ovi, an umbrella brand for a forthcoming set of online services. Among these services is a new Nokia Music Store, which will offer both over-the-air and PC-based downloads, with two-way sync between device and PC. The service will launch in Europe, featuring a catalog of "millions" of tracks. Individual song downloads will cost 1 Euro and full albums 10 Euros. A subscription, PC-tethered, streaming-only service will also be available for 10 Euros per month. (The whiz-bang Flash site introducing Ovi is here. A press release is here.)
The service leverages Nokia's acquisition of Seattle-based Loudeye last August. Loudeye was founded in 1997 by Martin Tobias, an ex-Microsoftie, and created online music stores for third parties, similar to what MediaNet (formerly MusicNet) does. Microsoft cited Loudeye as an important Windows Media partner, although Loudeye also employed other technologies in its stores.
Nokia and Loudeye originally partnered back in 2004 to create an music platform for wireless carriers. Nokia reasoned that as these stores became more common, it would help Nokia sell more expensive multimedia-capable handsets. But while ringtones have been a reasonably good (if rapidly maturing) business, full-song over-the-air downloads haven't really taken off. For example, according to a Jan. 2007 study by Telephia, while 10.5% of U.S. phone users have a music player on their phone, only 8.5% of those users have actually bought a song over the air.
The relatively lackluster performance of carriers' music stores, combined with Apple's entry into the handset business, appears to have spooked Nokia into creating its own music store. But there's a problem here: Apple's brand is so strong, and demand for its phone was so high, that the company was able to extract some concessions from AT&T. In particular, instead of letting users download songs over the air from an AT&T store, Apple requires iPhone users to transfer songs from their computers using iTunes, just like an iPod. (This may change on Sept. 5, although I suspect any over-the-air downloads would come courtesy of a wireless version of iTunes, not an AT&T store.)
Is Nokia's brand as strong as Apple's? I don't think so. Nokia makes some great handsets, but people don't wait in line for days to buy them. In addition, Apple controls its distribution through its Web site and Apple Stores, while Nokia depends mainly on carriers to resell its handsets.
The upshot? Carriers have a lot more leverage over Nokia than over Apple. European wireless carrier Orange has already threatened to boycott handsets that feature the new Nokia store. The dispute is supposedly over "user experience," but I suspect that Orange would simply prefer to keep any profit from music downloads for itself, rather than collecting only data fees.
Who do you think will win this war of wills, the carriers or Nokia? And could Apple face similar resistance as it tries to expand into other markets?
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