At the TiEcon2008 conference, Vineet Taneja, Head of Go to Market (India), Sales for Nokia disclosed that the company intends to launch the Nokia Music Store in India early next year (2009). D. Shivakumar, MD of Nokia India later confirmed the plans to us, but declined to comment on specifics. The Nokia Music Store allows users who have purchased a Nokia 5310 or a 3G enabled N95 to download all the music they want, for one full year. They just need to register their phone, and can download the music to their PC, and transfer it to the mobile handset. The service is currently live in Finland, UK, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, France, Sweden and Spain. There are two elements at the core of this launch - the first is the content acquisition, and the other is the distribution. Nokia is already acquiring content for the launch of its Ovi service, though the words "Free Music" will scare away many a content owner. DRM will be key to content acquisition, and an "all you can eat" plan won't come cheap for Nokia. The other is the distribution - Broadband penetration is abysmally low in India, and Nokia will have to either allow users to download content over the mobile (which will end up being rather expensive for consumers). What will also limit the service, is the fact that it is restricted to particular handsets, so Nokia will use it primarly to sell the handsets. Note: The access to…
