Delays hit Nokia's web push
2007-11-02 14:13
Helsinki - Nokia's move into internet
operations faced headwinds on Friday, as the cellphone maker
postponed the start of its gaming service due to software
testing delays, and Warner pulled its songs from Nokia's music shop.
The gaming service and music shop are among the cornerstones
of the world's top cellphone maker's big push into mobile
internet services under its new "Ovi" brand.
Nokia unveiled the long-awaited gaming service at a large
media event in August, saying then it would be available
globally in November.
"N-gage is coming in December. Software testing is taking a
bit more time than what we had expected," Kari Tuutti said. "We
are talking about a couple of weeks."
Nokia opened its first music store in Britain earlier this
week, but Warner Music Group Corp is withholding its content
from the site, partly over concerns about illegal downloads at
Nokia's file-sharing site Mosh, the Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition.
"We think we have done a lot to ensure that content owners' rights are not abused," Tuutti said. "We are hoping to reach agreement with Warner."
Nokia is the first handset maker to move strongly into the
content space with services like Mosh, where more than six million people have downloaded audio or video files, programmes or documents.
Tuutti said Nokia's Mosh uses "fingerprint" technology from US firm Audible Magic, which scans and checks the files before they are downloaded to the site. Similar software is used by many other large internet service providers.
Nokia plans to launch the music store next in Germany,
France and Spain.
"There are still more than two million titles in the store," Tuutti said, adding that other major labels - Universal Music Group, EMI and SonyBMG - were involved, along with numerous independent labels.