UK's Mobile Network Operators To Boycott Nokia "Comes With Music" Scheme

Comes With Music has faced its first setback at a very early stage as UK's top mobile operators - Vodafone, O2, T-Mobile and Orange - have vowed not to sell Nokia's free music service over their networks, at least until Christmas.

The FT reports that Nokia, like Apple, has run into difficulties during discussions with the network operators. This could spell some bad news since Nokia is betting heavily on CMW to fend off competition from rivals Apple and Android.

And if UK network operators do not lend support to Nokia's music platform, one can expect their US counterparts to follow suit, not only on CMW but also on Ovi, which is Nokia's "umbrella concept" for internet services.

Ultimately, there could be two reasons why network operators are so reluctant to follow Nokia; the first has to do with profit sharing. There's no real value in "free" and as the Guardian pointed out, with each phone worth only £50 to parties outside Nokia, network operators would have a hard time getting a few pounds off every phone sold.

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The second issue has to do with the cost of downloading the songs - since the deal is a seemingly unlimited one, data bills could possibly run into several Gigabytes per month per handset, which is not sustainable for mobile network operators who would have to allocate the necessary bandwidth.

Nokia has also been slow to roll out Comes With Music to other handsets. Only the N95 and the 5310 - to be sold in Nokia shops and through Carphonewarehouse - are currently compatible with CWM, that leaves 101 other Nokia phones out of the picture.

See also
Five Reasons Why Nokia, Vodafone and Other Unlimited Music Schemes Will Not Last Long
Nokia 5800 XPressmusic Touchscreen Handset : A quick roundup
5 reasons why Nokia's Tube Xpress 5800 Smartphone Won't Make Android Or Apple's iPhone Shiver