Carphone Warehouse will be the exclusive UK pre-pay channel offering the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic Comes With Music edition. People who buy the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic Comes With Music edition will have the freedom to find and listen to music from a diverse catalogue, including international and UK artists. Carphone Warehouse is accepting pre-orders via its website.
Andrew Harrison, UK CEO at The Carphone Warehouse, commented: “We expect the Nokia 5310 Comes With Music to be the gift for Christmas and at the top of all shopping lists. We know how much our customers love music and we hope to make music millionaires of people everywhere.”
Simon Ainslie, Nokia UK managing director, added: “Comes With Music is the most compelling digital music offer ever introduced to the UK. You get a fantastic Nokia device with unlimited access for a year to a huge catalogue of music. We’re thrilled to be working with Carphone Warehouse to bring Comes With Music to the UK.”
Gartner research director Carolina Milanesi commented: “Comes with Music is the more radical part of Nokia's music service offering. In a devices market like Western Europe that is saturated and highly competitive, differentiation is key. Differentiating on the hardware side is not always enough. With Comes with Music, Nokia is trying to add more value to its devices to help drive brand as well as a higher price tag on the devices themselves.
“In the current economic climate that has been having a negative impact on sales of high end devices, it is interesting that the first device announced with Comes With Music is a mid tier device,” Milanesi continued. “Users are turning their attention from high end to mid tier, making this already competitive segment even more so.”
However, the launch has provoked a quick retaliation from O2, which points to its launch of iPhone 3G as a strong alternative to Nokia’s Comes With Music. Antony Douglas, head of content at O2, said of the news: “We want to make sure we offer our customers a wide choice of options to get the maximum benefit of music through O2 and will be watching Nokia’s Come with Music package with interest. O2’s strategy is to ensure we partner with the best companies in the music industry.
“Alongside our sponsorship of The O2, the O2 Wireless festival and O2 Undiscovered, we work with Napster Mobile and Sony BMG, who support our recently launched MyPlay service, to give our customers access to some of the world’s most popular and celebrated artists. Similarly, all our iPhone customers have access to iTunes, the world’s largest music store,” Douglas continued.