Nokia Comes With Music

Discontinued
2nd September 2008

Nokia wants to be more than just a mobile phone manufacturer, after all, these days the amount of profit on some of the handsets they sell is tiny. To this end, Nokia have tried to branch out into services and web portals, sometimes coming into conflict with mobile networks who usually provide that sort of thing.

Comes With Music is Nokia's latest attempt in this field. Instead of just imitating the likes of Apple's iTunes, Nokia have done something a bit more novel.. when you buy a special "Comes With Music" phone, you get unlimited music downloads for a one-off fee.

This "all you can eat" proposition is coming to the UK soon, via the Carphone Warehouse. Customers who buy the special "Comes With Music" version of the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic will get a year's free downloads which they can then keep.

More details of just how this will work are to be announced next month, but presumably there is some sort of Digital Rights Management built into the handset. The 5310 is hardly new - it was released last year - but it has a reputation as being a good music phone, and it isn't too expensive.

There's no information on pricing, although this is going to be a prepay package for pay-as-you-go customers. The indications are that this is being geared up for the Christmas rush.. and it's easy to see how this could be an appealing gift for music lovers.

Quite how Nokia intend to make money with this flat-fee business model is not known. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.