It Is All About The Music

The mobile market is flooded with iPhone form-factor devices, and some devices that are intended to “kill” the iPhone.
Until Nokia’s Remix event it seemed that Nokia does not pay attention to the rise of the iPhone.
They reasoned this position by showing recent researches showed that the potential market for iPhone-like devices which are “design centric” is 5% of the mobile devices market.
Now after the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic was announced, Nokia is back on track, but it is not because of the 5800, it is because of the new service they announced: “Come With Music”.
In addition to the fact that the iPhone is an amazing piece of hardware (at least cosmetically and user interface wise) it is also the first phone with a well based music download service, the iTunes.
While with iTunes, music tracks are purchased per song or album, “Come With Music” offers a new way of purchasing music (Unlike Nokia Music Store).
You will not pay per song, the music “comes” with the device.
A free annual subscription is given for any Nokia device for unlimited tracks, at the end of the year all the tracks are yours, Of course, with some limitations.
The annual subscription can be renewed, just purchase a new Nokia device.
Nokia’s business model makes sense, while other services generate revenue from selling tracks, Nokia recruits music to help her stay the biggest mobile phone manufacturer.

It is not known to many, but Nokia with its MP3 capable phones became the brand with the largest market share in MP3 players (larger than Apple, Creative, SanDisk etc.).

But Nokia and Apple are not alone in this battle, Sony Ericsson announced recently its PlayNow arena, an all new music and mobile content store.
Sony Ericsson plans to maneuver between operators so they will foster Sony Ericsson’s devices and will not see that it bears a threat to their business model.
Sony, backed by its latest 260 million dollars acquisition of Gracenote, the company behind Track-id, is fully armed for the music battle.
The real battle will begin in 2009 when most of the services will be available worldwide and enough supporting devices are sold.

(For more information take a look at the table)