Into Tech

Nokia, the world’s largest mobile phone company, will launch an all-out assault on Apple’s iPhone today with a new range of phones that will give music lovers access to an unlimited service.

Anyone willing buy a Nokia Comes With Music pre-pay phone will be able to download up to 2.1m music tracks - about a quarter of the number available from Apple’s iTunes - onto their computer for no extra charge for 12 months.

Those tracks can be loaded onto the Nokia phone and after a year users will need to buy a new device in order to continue downloading new releases. In contrast to other so-called unlimited music services, however, if they choose not to buy a new device, they can keep all the tracks they have already downloaded.

They will still play on the user’s computer and handset, which will also still be able to send texts and make calls.

Nokia, which is hoping the phone will be popular this Christmas with parents seeking to make their children’s music file sharing legal, will today announce that the UK will be the first market to get Comes With Music.

The first phone will be its 5310 handset, although at least one more device will be announced in time for Christmas.

The company has signed up Carphone Warehouse, which has more than 800 shops, to stock the phone. Carphone Warehouse is also Apple’s sole independent stockist of the iPhone.

Nokia’s UK managing director Simon Ainslie believes the Nokia Comes With Music range will be “the number one selling product at Christmas”.

“This is a unique proposition. Nobody has launched an unlimited music service that allows you to keep your music with no catches,” said Ainslie. “What we are trying to do is bring back some value to the music industry from people who are not paying for music. There are a lot of parents who would like to legitimise their children’s purchasing of music.”

Already some internet service providers (ISPs) have sent letters to persistent illegal file sharers warning them that their activities have been noticed, having reached a deal with industry body the BPI. For many parents this will be the first indication that their children are doing anything illicit on the internet.

Nokia Comes With Music, which was first mooted last year, is a gamble for the Finnish handset maker, which supplies four out of every 10 phones sold worldwide. It risks further damaging Nokia’s already fraught relationship with many of the major mobile phone companies. Last year it provoked their ire by announcing its own suite of mobile services - under the Ovi brand - which operators saw as a direct attempt to undercut their relationship with mobile phone users.

In fact, Nokia does not yet have a mobile phone partner for Comes With Music. As a result anyone buying the phone will have to put their existing SIM card into it or sign up for a SIM-only deal such as O2’s Simplicity.

All five UK networks have held talks with Nokia about Comes With Music but none has found the service attractive - or lucrative - enough to sign up. All the operators have their music download services and see no reason to subsidise a handset that connects users with Nokia’s own music store rather than their own. But Nokia still hopes to persuade an operator to subsidise the cost of the phone, which is why it will not set the price of the first handset until next month. It is expected to cost somewhere between £100 and £300.

Nokia has decided to press on with its unlimited service because of the threat posed to its dominance of the industry by Apple, according to mobile industry insiders. Sales of the iPhone are still small - with analysts forecasting 45m will be sold by next year compared with a global market of about 1bn handsets - it could soon be made available on more networks as the original exclusive network deals it signed in the UK, France, Germany and the US come up for renewal over the next few years.

Nokia will pay the music companies a licence fee to make their catalogues available to customers and for the three major labels that have already signed up - SonyBMG, Universal and Warner Music - the service is another attempt to try and claw some revenue back from the illegal file sharers. But Nokia has yet to reach a deal with the UK’s host of independent music labels or EMI.

“Comes With Music is a way for Nokia to add extra value to its handsets and generate more stickiness for its brand,” said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner. But Nokia has tailored the service to the economic downturn in its major European markets.

“The 5310 handset is definitely more aimed at the mid-tier of the market - this is not the high-end device that people were expecting to see for Comes With Music,” she added. “They are responding to the trend we are beginning to see in Europe of people switching towards the mid-tier because of the economic climate.”

Explainer: Music unlimited

Nokia Comes With Music is the latest attempt to make digital music pay by bundling the cost together with another service or product - in this case the cost of the handset. There are already numerous subscription-based unlimited music services such as Napster and MusicStation; even Apple is rumoured to be working on one for iTunes. Rather than charging a separate subscription, the Danish internet firm TDC has bundled the cost of unlimited music with its broadband service. BSkyB recently signed a deal with Universal that could lead to a similar service in the UK. In France, Orange has launched MusiqueMax, which allows users to download up to 500 tracks a month for €12 and keep them as long as they like. All these services have some sort of digital rights management (DRM) software that prevents tracks being played after a subscription expires or means they can only be transferred to certain devices. Nokia Comes With Music uses Microsoft DRM technology, so downloaded tracks cannot be played on an iPod. Others in the music industry believe the future of digital music lies in offering DRM-free tracks that can be played on any device. Such tracks are already sold by iTunes, Amazon and handset maker Sony Ericsson in the Nordic region.

The wireless home theater system is the greatest thing since the development of the home theater system itself. With wires and cables layered in the back of the media center, and running throughout the room while connecting all the speakers - wireless is the only way to go. Some of the new Magnolia lines in [...]

2008 is definitely Sony Ericsson’s time to shine they unveil their new G series mobile phones, which currently consists of the Sony Ericsson G900 and it’s budge size little brother, the Sony Ericsson G700. The G700 is currently being under appreciated due to the critical acclaim being given to the G900, resulting in the G700 [...]

For years, flat panel TVs have all been about who has the biggest [typical] but these days, it’s all about who has the thinnest.

Sony showed off its really thin Bravia ZX1 last week at the IFA Show 2008 in Berlin just as Philips was introducing its own pared-down TV, the Essence.

It’s not as thin as the Bravia ZX1 but it is clever and at 38mm deep all the way through, it’s been designed to make it easy to hang flush on your wall. Apart from being beautifully designed, the Essence is a 42in 1080p telly with 100Hz picture processing and a 2-millisecond response time. It also weighs just 16.5kg and comes with all you need to mount it perfectly in the box.

Nokia has mobile phones in entry-level for the mass as well as they have their highly distinguished Vertu brand for the class. Nokia mobile phones have placed themselves in all technologies and innovations. Not to forget their counterparts like Samsung phones, Lg phones, Sony Ericsson phones etc. Even they have well established themselves in different [...]

The battle for the skinniest LCD TV continues this week with Sony unveiling the Bravia ZX1 at the IFA 2008 show, which is just 9.9mm at its thinnest.

The ZX1 sure is anorexic and compares favourably to the other super-skinnys like the Hitachi UT models or the Sharp X Series AQUOS LCD TVs but the real innovation is Sony’s ability to make all those unsightly cables disappear.

In the present times, mobile phones have turned in to highly functional gadgets, which can perform more than one task in a simplified manner. It has come a long way since the times, when these were used only for conversing or exchanging messages. Nowadays, you can do very many things with a mobile phone handset. [...]

Apparently this is the week for force feedback “haptics” company Immersion to settle its various patent lawsuits. We already noted the infamous teledildonics case has been settled and now it’s settled an ongoing lawsuit with Microsoft as well. We wrote about the details back in May. It’s a case that highlights just how wasteful some patent lawsuits can be.

In this case, Immersion had sued both Sony and Microsoft for violating its patents, and it offered them a deal that’s becoming all too typical: giving competitors a chance to settle first in order to join the other side of the case. It’s a neat trick. Basically, you tell both sides that they can just pay up, and close out the case, while also getting the chance to claim some of that money back if Immersion wins against their competitor. Of course, Immersion took it to another level after Microsoft agreed to this deal, originally handing over to Immersion $26 million. After it got Sony to pay $130 million, it told Microsoft that the deal wasn’t technically a “settlement,” and thus it was excluded from the terms of the deal it gave Microsoft. Hence the lawsuit from Microsoft.

This latest settlement has Immersion apparently realizing it was never going to win the case, and forking over $20.75 million back to Microsoft, ostensibly from its winnings against Sony. It makes you wonder what’s up that Immersion seems to be rushing to settle its various cases. Either way, it shows another aspect of how the patent abuse game is played these days, with patent holders pitting competitors against each other to pressure companies into settling.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

The Associated Press has a short blurb about how haptics company and aggressive patent holder Immersion has settled its lawsuit with Internet Services LLC. Oddly, the AP report leaves out the details of the case — which were pretty interesting — preferring to make it sound like a generic patent lawsuit. The case, which we wrote about a few months back, involved questions over whether or not Immersion owed Internet Services money from Immersion’s patent settlement with Sony.

You see, Immersion licenses “haptics” technology, which may be better known as “force feedback” technology — the stuff that makes your video game controller vibrate when you drive your virtual car off the track in that racing game, for example. Immersion realized that such force feedback technology would also have a market in the porn world — but apparently didn’t want to sully its own name by associating with that world. So, instead, it licensed the right to enforce its patents in the “cybersex” and “teledildonics” to Internet Services. Then Immersion still gets the money but doesn’t have to be seen as shaking down porn purveyors. The problem, though, was that Internet Services believed that the Sony PlayStation could be used for “cybersex” purposes as well as for straight gaming — and thus, it felt cut out of Immersion’s settlement with Sony.

And, from there, the fight was on — and it got even more interesting earlier this year when the famed patent lawyer that Internet Services had hired to represent it against Immersion tried to quit — and Internet Services went to court to require him to stay on the case. There’s no word on the details of the settlement, but it’s rather surprising that the AP would take this case and leave out most of the more interesting details.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

If you’re in the market for a wireless home music streaming system but, are unable to knock of the bank needed to afford the pricey - but great - Sonos system, then Sony may have something of interest.

This is the S-Airplay Wireless iPod Dock, comprising a central station where you plug in your iPod dock and then stream music around the home to separate S-Air wireless speakers that you plug into a spare socket. The streaming range is a claimed 164-ft, so good enough for most domiciles. If you have a mansion, then you’ll be able to afford the Sonos anyway.

Sony is making a lot of the fact that it’s a snap to set-up so anyone can be streaming their favourite tunes from the living room to the bog in no time.