It is becoming increasingly clear that Microsoft understands that its mobile future lies with services, not just the Windows operating system and associated software platform, and now it is fleshing out its challenge to Google with the launch of a music offering and applications store.
The somewhat belated shift to services is not just because Windows has failed to grab a dominant share in the mobile world, but because the tight integration of software platform, devices and stores, is becoming the fundamental model for the mobile internet ‘ as demonstrated most strikingly by Apple.
This model is now being pursued, with assorted variations, by every company that aims to steer the mobile web market, from operators like Orange, to device makers like Palm and RIM, to the software giants Google and Microsoft and of course Nokia’s Ovi.
Nearly all these would-be market leaders have picked mobile music as one of the first and most important testbeds for their web strategies and devices RIM said last week that it expected ‘dozens of music apps’ in its store as it refocuses its BlackBerry range on high end consumers and the ‘four screen strategy’. Apple, of course, has set the bar high with iTunes/iPhone and the highly successful App Store, and now the others are following.
Nokia is set to embark on phase two of rolling out its Comes With Music service, a key aspect of its Ovi portal of web services; Sony Ericsson is also playing the music card heavily with its Walkman phone brand and PlayNow offerings; music is likely to feature heavily in the emerging stores for Android, RIM BlackBerry and Palm.
So Microsoft would have looked left out had it not also stormed into the music scene, and is set to unveil its Skymarket store and several cloud applications at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month. Given its operator-heavy focus, MWC is also likely to see a strong counter-move from the European cellco community, which want to establish their own brands for the mobile web instead of the handset vendors.
Microsoft has chosen the UK, one of the most advanced markets for mobile content services, to test its business model and put its flag in the ground as a serious mobile web player. It says its download offering, part of its MSN Mobile portal, will score by being network independent ‘ chiming in with the trend for apps to be open access and purely web-based, rather than tied to an operator’s portal; though scarcely likely to make friends of the UK’s cellcos, which are pushing their own internet brands such as Vodafone Live.
The MSN Mobile Music offering, launched with UK-based VidZone Digital Media (which also underpins Xbox Live and MSN’s video portal), boasts one million-plus tracks plus 10,000 videos from Sony, BMG, EMI Music and Warner Music. It follows the iTunes structure of charging per track, though those charges look high for such a competitive market – £1.50 ($2.07) per track, ringtones for £3 ($4.05) and videos for £2 ($2.77). iTunes, which will soon support over the air downloads to iPhones, offers single tracks for 79p ($1.09), while Amazon.co.uk goes down to 59p (77 cents) for new releases.
MSN Mobile is not DRM-free, despite the recent move by Apple to remove these unpopular restrictions from its iTunes content. MSN says on its site: ‘When you purchase the music, you get unlimited plays for the content whilst it remains on the device. At this stage, you cannot transfer your music to another device or PC.’ It should be able to free up content for moving around a little more once its PlayReady DRM is completed ‘ though that has been so long in coming, it may never arrive.
MSN, despite all the advantages of Microsoft’s presence in the PC and PC browser, has lagged behind Google and Yahoo in the web services portal market, and is even weaker in the mobile space, where it also faces the challenge of Ovi. Boosted by services such as the new music store, Microsoft claims MSN Mobile is now the UK’s largest commercial mobile portal that does not belong to a cellco, within a year of its launch ‘ and is looking for similar success elsewhere.
MSN Mobile will work on 130 handset at launch, accessible from any browser, not just IE Mobile.
Along with Skymarket, which should look similar to Apple’s successful iPhone App Store, there will be Skybox, a cloud service that is expected to resemble the iPhone’s MobileMe. This allows smartphone users to back-up, restore, sync and share data, and Microsoft should also release a business version for Exchange, called Skyline.
Assuming Windows is not open sourced any time soon, the billion dollar question for Microsoft, and the mobile software world, is whether its web strategy will remain Windows-only, or whether it will seek provide a major apps platform that spans multiple operating systems. So far, such work has been done mainly by Java backers or cross-platform software houses like Adobe.