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Nokia and Microsoft to join forces in digital music

14 February 2005 11:18 by Petteri "dRD" Pyyny | 8 comments

Hell just froze over: the long-time rivals, world's largest mobile phone company, Finnish Nokia and the software giant Microsoft have teamed up in order to deliver Microsoft's Windows Media platform to Nokia's upcoming phones.

This means that future Nokia handsets will be able to play music and videos wrapped in Microsoft's WMA and WMV formats -- with and without DRM restrictions. The obvious aim is to deliver a "universal" platform that would allow users of WMA-enabled online music stores, such as Napster, to transfer the tracks they've purchased to their mobile phones.

The deal also puts Microsoft's earlier ambitions to put its own Windows Mobile operating system to major manufacturers' handsets in a new light, as the WMA support is planned to implement over Nokia's preferred operating system, Symbian.

The biggest loser in this game is obviously RealNetworks, which has enjoyed a pre-installed monopoly on most Symbian-based phones, providing the only near-universal a/v platform available on phones. Now that is about to change and it is unclear whether Real's applications will be bundled with future Nokia handsets at all. In 2004, Nokia shipped over 10 million phones with an integrated a/v capabilities and that figure is about to rise dramatically over the next few years as the a/v features get common on even very basic phones.

Source: Reuters

Permalink to this article

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Discuss this article!
punx777 (Senior Member) 14 February 2005 12:31
woopie [ + quote]
neewbie (Member) 14 February 2005 17:33
i hate wmv and wma. the sound and video quality is horrible. especially on a mobile phone...... [ + quote]
c4iscool (Member) 14 February 2005 18:25
You can't stop mircosoft from growning. Mircosoft owns the world...and your ass. [ + quote]
vietorisz (Junior Member) 14 February 2005 22:43
In general i think that Nokia phones are somehow made for women and dummies, never had never will have one. Windows is the must have bad thing going better though and in my opinion WMA is way much better than MP3 in quality. [ + quote]
neewbie (Member) 15 February 2005 1:12
Mp3 is way better than wma. Why do u think wma files are so small ? there crap [ + quote]
c4iscool (Member) 15 February 2005 7:35
wma are (most of time) smaller than mp3s, what are u talking about? [ + quote]
steve7059 (Junior Member) 16 February 2005 5:50
Using .wma files on a mobile phone probably makes better sense than .MP3's. Their smaller size is their advantage. Phones typically don't have tons of extra memory, so if I can shrink the file size, I can fit more songs! Yes, there is an accompanying degradation in quality. But on a phone, will it even be noticeable? We're not exactly talking high end speakers on these things you know! [ + quote]
spooky2k (Member) 16 February 2005 5:53
that sucks. I loved NOkia phones because of their simplicity of use. BUt now they can screw emselves. I'm going with another company when i get my new mobile phone. WHY MICROSOFT!?they fucking suck. Dan x [ + quote]