Nokia gets Orange breakthrough for Comes With Music

MOST READ
LATEST NEWS

EVENTS

Join Orange, Amazon and Google at the Open Mobile Summit London May 29-30

MARKET PLACE

Carrier Broadband Performance: Africa & Middle East

Voice over LTE: Market Analysis and Forecasts

Advertize your telecoms job

JOBS

Experienced Event Organiser

Nokia gets Orange breakthrough for Comes With Music

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 14 May, 2009

READ MORE: Nokia | Orange

Nokia continues to rejig its mobile web services strategy in the run-up to opening its Ovi Store, with various formerly discrete products being shoehorned into the umbrella brand. The process is not always smooth, as early problems with the UK launch of Comes With Music (CWM) showed, but Nokia is starting to look more convincing and - critically - getting more operators on its side. So it has signed up Orange UK for a relaunch of CWM, and has even managed to calm down German cellcos, angered at its decision to bundle Skype with some smartphones.

While Nokia may dream of a world where it sells its devices and integrated web services directly to the consumer, in reality, especially in its developed markets, it needs the support of its largest channel, the cellcos, to succeed. These have understandably been ambivalent about supporting Nokia content and services too aggressively, since most want to build up their own web brands and stores, and while players like Vodafone have taken a two-tiered approach, others like Orange have been more obdurate.

So it is a real breakthrough for Nokia to have signed an exclusive contract with Orange UK to offer the 5800 XpressMusic touchscreen musicphone with a two-year subscription to the CWM unlimited download service (the usual CWM deal from Nokia is just one year). Exclusives, as Apple knows well, have the downside of limiting market reach for a while, but they do bring the operator's marketing reach and budget with them. Given that CWM saw limited uptake and was generally thought to be poorly communicated to the UK public, a relaunch with a strong new handset and Orange's full blown support should help matters second time around.

CWM initially launched with Carphone Warehouse but no major cellco, and is reported to have attracted only 20,000 UK users, though subsequent launches in other countries like Singapore are looking more successful.

Meanwhile, the German units of T-Mobile and Vodafone have both softened their stance on mobile VoIP, having previously said they would refuse to sell Nokia handsets with integrated Skype software. Both are now exploring the possibilities of offering special tariffs for mobile VoIP use instead of blocking the service. Among the other German cellcos, E-Plus retains a ban on mobile VoIP while O2 said it was assessing its future strategy.

One of the casualties of the move to unite all Nokia web services under one store is Ovi Share, a media sharing site. The Finnish giant only launched it in February, but said it is now stopping further investment in the product as part of its total overhaul of Ovi's line-up and branding. It will keep the site operational, but will make no further enhancements to it. Analysts believe Ovi Share saw poor take-up because of strong competition from established names like Picasa, Flickr and Facebook. Nokia is now likely to work with such firms rather than against them, indicating that it needs to drop its 'not invented here' approach to mobile web services. It has already taken a major step in this direction by starting to create a network of partnerships under the Ovi umbrella, saying it would rely more heavily on third parties to expand its offering, in order to reduce cost and time to market, and leverage popular apps in the market.