Petteri Pyyny
14 Feb 2005 11:18
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