Nokia has announced that UK will be the first market where it will launch its much talked about "Comes With Music" service. The agreement with UMG (Universal Music Group), SONY BMG and Warner Music will ensure that users will have access to over 2.1 million music tracks. Carphone Warehouse will be the exclusive UK prepay channel to sell Nokia 5310 XpressMusic "Comes With Music" handset.

In general, adoption of most mobile music services has so far been slow and disappointing. Nokia hopes to change this trend and therefore unlike most other music services, "Comes With Music" will allow users to keep and listen to all the downloaded music even after the one year subscription period ends. However, many media reports have raised concerns on the business model and whether Nokia will be able to make any profit from the service.

"Also, 'Comes With Music' forms part of Nokia’s strategy to compete with rivals such as Apple and to drive the uptake of its Ovi services, including the purchase of music from its Music Store. Nokia believes that after the one year subscription period ends, many of the 'Comes With Music' users will continue to spend on music and purchase new tracks and releases from the Nokia music store, or will subscribe to unlimited access to its Music Store", adds Pandey.

Mobile music industry needs to come up with radical new services that can tap into mobile-specific functions and find a business model attractive to users. The successful business models will be the ones that users vote for, not the ones that operators, handset manufacturers and other dominant players in the mobile industry impose on the market.

With CAT-iq one has high quality audio, which could be offered to the home as well. Hardware vendors in joint cooperation with telco's could explore this market themselves, or hook up with Nokia, Apple, Sony Ericsson etc.

This would give a real additional reason for the consumer to purchase CAT-iq products.