Nokia partners with Loudeye

A counter measure to the Apple / Motorola alliance. Less than a month ago Apple and Motorola teamed up to transform iTunes services to the mobile phone platform. Now Nokia announces the partnership with the digital music distributor Loudeye. Such partnership was definitely expected, but it is slightly surprising that the chosen partner is not Real Networks, which currently supplies media player software for the Nokia phones. One interesting detail is that in the Loudeye PC targeted service, they utilize the Windows Media format, which is not currently supported by the Nokia phones.

For its part, Nokia doesn't appear interested in entering such a business itself - essentially it sees the deal as a way of building demand for its handsets. With almost all phones bought by mobile networks and sold on to subscribers, Nokia's key customers are not consumers but networks. If it can put them in the way of a service that has real customer appeal and - crucially - encourages users to make use of their data-oriented networks, almost certainly 3G ones, then hopefully they'll buy more handsets from Nokia.

Source: TheRegister