Nokia X6 – Comes With Music

Nokia World 09 is on and the announcements have been coming thick and fast from Stuttgart. The next Nokia iPhone killer into the fray is the X6. This shiny beast carries 32 GB of memory and runs Symbian S60 5th Edition. I can’t wait to get my hands on one.

Nokia’s Comes With Music service is getting a big push again this year. Whenever I read ‘Comes With Music’ I always think of the 5 minute cassette tape of session-man Jazz that came with a new Sony Walkman back in the eighties, it’s a peculiar strap-line. ‘Comes With..’ refers to the state of arrival rather than the service lifetime: so out-of-the-box my mobile has music on-board? All well and good but what about tomorrow? How do I fill up on sounds then?

Pedantry aside, Nokia hopes to compete with iTunes-style paid download and Spotify’s ad-supported streaming by providing a rental hybrid – all the music you want for an annual fee. Personally, I want to own my music but then I grew up with 12″ vinyl Long Playing Records. These days I am constantly and consistently suprised by the way in which the very younger generations (i.e. my 12 year old son) consume music.

Although it’s far too soon to make a punt on which music service business model is going to succeed in the longer term, I’ll put a fiver on Spotify and wait for their Symbian app.

Update: Over at All About Symbian, Ewan Spence wonders: what about Comes With Books?

Nokia CEO: We’ve got to transform the company

According to Fierce Wireless, Nokia CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, has admitted that the company is making efforts to restructure itself after accepting that the mobile industry is undergoing the biggest upheaval in two decades.

What successful company doesn’t transform itself? If longevity and profitability is your goal, it’s a mistake not to change your ideas and your expectations to suit your circumstances and your market.

Adaptability is the essence of evolution.