Nokia Launches Its Arab World Music Store

posted on: Feb 11, 2010

Few hours ago we live streamed Nokia’s major regional press conference where they announced the launch of ‘Comes with Music, ’which offers people a year of unlimited access to the entire Ovi Music catalog with the ability to keep all downloaded tracks even after the year is over.

The Arab world launch covers 11 markets that include Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestinian Territories, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman. With the purchase of the new Nokia X6 16 GB Comes With Music edition, users will have access to a music catalog of an estimated four million tracks from the biggest international and regional labels that people will be able to download for free. The device with the service will be commercially available the first week of March, for an estimated price of USD 600, excluding sales taxes.

“ You can enjoy the music on the Nokia X6 device or your dedicated PC. The songs are yours to keep. So after the year is complete, the licenses do not expire and you can continue to enjoy all of your music,” said Jake Larsen, Head of Music, Nokia Middle East and Africa.

Music is provided by all major international and regional labels including Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music, EMI Music, Rotana, Mazzika, Melody Music, Platinum Records, and leading content aggregator The Orchard, as well as thousands of independent labels. The content covers a cross section of Western and Arabic music, as well as among others, Indian, Pakistani and Fillipino catalogues.

Nokia X6:

Capable of playing up to 35 hours of music, the Nokia X6 is Nokia entertainment device, combining 16GB of on-board memory, ARM 11 434 MHz processor, with a TFT capacitive touchscreen 3.2” finger touch interface, and runs on Symbian OS v9.4, Series 60 rel. 5. Nokia pitch the device for “music lovers and social butterflies”, the Nokia X6 has a 16:9 widescreen. With direct access to Ovi Store, the Nokia X6 is integrated b with 20 friends and virtual communities, like Facebook, to your homescreen.

Nokia Comes With Music is now available on altogether 27 markets worldwide, including Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestinian Territories, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman, as well as Australia, Austria, Brazil, Finland, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Singapore, SA, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, Spain and Russia.

Our Take:
Experts put iTunes Music store and its seamless integration with iPod, the main reason behind the success of iPod, which in turn helped push the iPhone. Apple has been neglecting the Arab region and until today only few Arab countries have a dedicated iTunes store ( more soon.)

Arabic Music is not available on iTunes as far as I know, so with this Move Nokia is set to dominate the Music Industry in the Arab world, they offer you one year free unlimited download with a prize of Zero and regional Music, Now Apple has to play the catchup game on this front not visa Versa.

Nokia did not reveal what will happen to users who wants to download Music after the one year nor when this service will be available on other Nokia devices, however I believe they will charge for downloading and what is important I think, Nokia has figured a away to enable e-payment in the Arab world, as until now credit card penetration is low. maybe, paying via SMS, Mobile bill etc.

Gaith Saqer
Arab Crunch