Nokia may have had limited impact in its original Comes With Music market, the UK, so far, but it is plowing ahead with plans to extend the unlimited subscription service to the US and Asia, and keeps piling on the music phones.
This week it is adding the XpressMusic 5530, which supports the new Ovi Store (so it can buy and play music direct from the Nokia Music Store). It also added a newer, better Blackberry-alike in the N72. The N71 has sold really well for Nokia and found it a place in the AT&T line up in the US, quite a feat for Nokia’s worst market, and this phone takes it on a stage.
Nokia upgraded the XpressMusic interface at Mobile World Congress earlier this year, and now has two scrolling bars – one a copy of the Sony Xross Media bar, for touchscreen left-to-right scrolling of media, and another similar feature for contacts. It now allows 20 contacts on the bar, up from just four. The Nokia 5530 XpressMusic homescreen has one-touch shortcuts to Facebook and MySpace.
This looks like a cutdown, 2G Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, and comes with a stainless steel finish, to ship in the third quarter at €199 (£169). It sits between the 5800, 5730 and the 5630 ultraslim version above it, and the other XpresssMusic phones, such as the 5330, below it, plus the bottom end cheap FM radio phone for emerging markets, the Nokia 5030.
Nokia has sold 450 million devices with a digital music player and the poor showing of its Comes With Music service so far is perhaps pushing the vendor to offer form factors that are cheaper for operators.
The firm is already looking to new markets. ‘Within the context of a global roll-out, absolutely the US is one of those countries we focus on,’ Elizabeth Schimel, Nokia’s global head of music services, told Dow Jones Newswires in a recent interview. ‘Asia is a big focus. We are the leading brand in several Asian markets.’
Meanwhile the Nokia E72 addition is a messaging phone with full Qwerty keyboard, with Nokia instant messaging on the homescreen which can talk to Yahoo and Google IM systems. The E72 also comes with A-GPS with a visual compass and integrated Maps, and the rest of its spec is much like the E71. It will ship late in the third quarter of 2009.