Looks like Apple’s highly successful iTunes music store  is set to face a tough competition later this month when mobile phone giant Nokia launches its own music download site. And to compete evenly with Apple who is set to intensify its domination in the music download industry with the release of the iPhone in the UK market later this year, Nokia is also releasing the N81 mobile unit equipped with 8GB of built in memory.

When it goes live, the Nokia music store will work with almost all of Nokia handsets. It will offer Nokia users the option to either purchase their favorite music through over-the-air transaction via their mobile phones or through direct downloads into their computers for transferring into their mobile phones.

Perhaps the greatest challenge that Nokia faces in line with this new venture is the download pricing scheme and the quality of downloaded music which are usually of poorer scale. In order to beat the iTunes, Nokia must come up with a competitive price that is not too stiff while at the same time making sure that the quality of music that it is going to serve is of high sounding quality.

Another issue that Nokia must tackle when it launches its music store is the issue on digital rights management (DRM).Although the prospect of taking off this digital rights protection code embedded on downloadable music is a far-fetch idea, Nokia might actually pull something one off that would de-restrict usage of the downloaded music. Hence, encouraging more users to purchase from its soon to be launched music store.

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Entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 4:57 pm under Cell phones.

Read more entries by Arnold Zafra.
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