At the 3GSM World Congress, in France yesterday, Microsoft announced what is likely to mean competition for Apple’s iPOD. The software giant will partner with mobile phone giant Nokia and Seattle-based Loudeye to launch a service that cellphone carriers could brand and use to sell music downloads playable on mobile phones or a PC.
The media initially expressed surprise over the fact that two companies who did not see eye-to-eye had turned business partners. The cold war between Microsoft and Nokia began some years back. The Finnish mobile phone giant did its best to keep Microsoft out of the mobile software arena. Nokia had chosen to power many of its phones with operating systems made by Symbian, a London company in which Nokia has a 48 percent stake. Last November, corporate animosity maintained status quo as Nokia quit the Computer and Communications Industry Association the day after the group ended its antitrust fight against Microsoft.
As they now join hands to work together, it would soon become easier for people to transfer digital music between their handsets and their personal computers. If that sounds like a challenge to Apple’s iPod, then it isn’t. Mobile phones’ memory cards for holding music, have a limited capacity, generally up to 1 gigabyte. That equals roughly 16 hours of music, whereas, the iPod portable player can hold as many as 40 GB. “But that is something that can change with time” argues a marketing exec from Microsoft.
The new relationship between the two giants will however be limited. The music service will not use Microsoft’s digital-file format or its digital management technology. It will instead use alternatives that are more commonly used among carriers. Microsoft will make their Windows Media Player software compatible with those alternatives. On its part, Nokia will enable its handsets to play music in Microsoft’s format as well as work with the latter’s digital rights management system in the future. It will also use Microsoft’s digital media player to handle music played on PCs. It will thus enhance interoperability between the PC world and the mobile world to the consumers.
Customers can purchase a song or a musical ring tone and download it directly onto their cellphones. The cost of the music downloaded would be added in the monthly bill. One can download the same songs onto their PCs as well as copy music stored on the computer onto their mobile phones.
The change of heart between the two giants was not lost on critics of Microsoft. They were quick to point to the partnership between Apple Computer and Motorola. These two companies collaborated to develop cellphones that will use Apple's iTunes music-player software.
Microsoft isn’t the only American company with whom the Finnish Nokia has teamed up for business. Last week, Nokia signed a deal with RealNetworks extending a partnership that was started in 2002. The deal would enable the mobile phone company to ship RealNetworks’s audio and video software along with Nokia handsets.
