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New Music Service Aims to Drown Out Apple
(02 Sep 2008, BWCS Staff)Global handset making giant Nokia has chosen the UK as the launch-market for its new "Comes with Music" service. The new phone system, available on the N 5310 model, will be on sale at Carphone Warehouse outlets and will give users a year of unlimited access to the Nokia Music Store catalogue. The phone-maker says that customers will be allowed to keep the downloaded tracks even after the year is up.
The Finnish company is hoping to steal the limelight back from Apple with this new service launch. While Nokia has not revealed how many N5310 models it has sold over the past year, it believes that the music service will greatly boost sales. The company did say that in the first quarter of 2008 it had shipped over four million units of its 5310 and 5610 models combined.
Nokia said it will reveal further details about its music service next month. In the UK, Carphone Warehouse will start taking pre-orders today. However, neither company would comment on how much the phones would cost or when the service will start.
The music industry is in dire straits and could do with developing new forms of sales. Last year global sales of CDs totaled just US$2.9 billion. According to some analysts, if each of Nokia's 146 million music phones sold last year had come with the "Comes with Music" service at an extra US$20 a time, the phone maker would have had a larger market for its music than the worldwide market for CDs in 2007.
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