<![CDATA[FT.com / Industries / IT – Nokia and Microsoft strike music deal:
The world’s largest mobile phone maker Nokia and software giant Microsoft struck a deal on Monday to make it easier for consumers to buy digital music on-line and play it back on their handsets.
In a comprehensive agreement, which involves a separate deal with digital media company Loudeye, Nokia agreed to put Microsoft’s music player software into its handsets.
This is interesting from two angles: 1.) It positions subscription music as the choice de jure for portable listening, and 2.) It raises the question, what about that Symbian operating system that Nokia’s been backing all these years? Is Microsoft going to grab its market share someday? Loudeye is in the deal because it must encode the music, a one-time fee, though one that will be repeated each time a new codec is introduced on Nokia handsets.]]>