Nokia introduces unlimited music download service and X6 music phone[updated]

Magnus Nystedt | Feb 11, 2010 | Comments View Comments

Nokia tonight introduced the Comes With Music unlimited digital music download service together with the X6 music mobile phone at an event in Beirut, Lebanon. Basically, when a customer buys an X6 phone it comes with a coupon for getting access to unlimited number of songs in Nokia’s selection of about four million tracks. You can during 12 months from purchase of the phone download – and re-download – as many tracks as you like as many times as you like. This is possible from only Comes With Music Edition Nokia phones and although they sell other models than X6 in other Comes With Music markets around the world they start with X6 in the Middle East and they announced no plans for when there will be a wider selection.

Although clearly an integral part of the announcements tonight the X6 was not given much attention by Nokia’s presenters. The Nokia X6 could be viewed as a successor to the 5800 XpressMusic and it runs Symbian OS just like the 5800. It has a 360 x 640 pixel TFT screen with capacitve touch-functionality, 16GB built-in storage, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and all the rest you’ve come to excpect from phones today.

“Nokia is changing the way music is experienced… forever” claimed Jake Larsen, Head of Music, Nokia Middle East and Africa. Although that is a grand statement it’s arguably true that Nokia is trying hard to bring a new way of delivering and buying digital music to the Middle East. Setting their sights on the high level of piracy of music and other content in the Middle East, Nokia believes that with this sort of all-you-can-eat deal that comes free (12 months worth) with the purchase of a new phone, they will at the very least make a significant dent in the piracy market in the region. Whether that’s reasonable to assume with a $600 is something that we’ll have to wait and see.

Steve Jobs famously said at the January 28 iPad event that Apple now is the “largest mobile devices company in the world” and said that Apple was bigger than even Nokia going by the expected annual revenue. That claim was quickly questioned by Nokia and you could say that tonight they fired back when Larsen said that Nokia is “the world’s biggest seller of music players” with “more than 425 million to date.” After the presentations I asked Larsen if this figure was confirmed and he said yes, it was official and confirmed.

Nokia is clearly positioning their OVI brand as the center of their digital universe. Ayman Chalhoub, Global Head of Music Sales, Retail Channel at Nokia, said that OVI Maps reached over one million downloads in less than a week, the OVI Store sees one million apps downloaded per day and one million users signed up for OVI Mail in less than six months. Saying that “the experience is broken”, referring to the way we traditionally buy music, Chalhoub announced that the Comes With Music concept will launch on March 1, 2010 in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Palestinian Territories, Egypt, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Saudi Arabia.

In a minor announcement tonight, Frederic Copper-Royer, Nokia Music Manager MENA, said that all tracks now available in Nokia’s Music Stores (Nokia refers to them as “a la carte”), including the UAE one, will from “end of February” be DRM free. Tracks can be purchased and downloaded as regular, non-protected MP3 files using a web browser. He confirmed that this means that Mac users and users of web browsers other than Internet Explorer will from them be able to purchase and enjoy music from Nokia’s music store.

Nokia should get a lot of credit for trying something new. Whether they’ll be successful or not time will tell. One thing for sure, this should put more pressure on Apple to come up with some kind of deal for the Middle East.