Major players in the mobile phone industry have unveiled plans to expand their music offerings in 2009 at MIDEM, the annual music business trade show.
Nokia, BlackBerry and Sony Ericsson all announced initiatives to promote their latest music services in order to steal back valuable market share from Apple's hugely successful iPhone. Nokia's Comes with Music service, launched in the UK in October 2008, is one of the most anticipated elements of this new horizon in the mobile industry.
With four million tracks available for unlimited use and download, the Finnish mobile giant hopes that this service - together with the launch of new, low-cost music-enabled handsets - will shore up its competitive edge in the year to come. Sony Ericsson, on the other hand, is currently in midst of improving its PlayNow mobile music service, which it claims will help beat the problem of illegal music downloads.
And Research in Motion - makers of the BlackBerry - is also in the process of adding a range of new applications to its handsets, including music features and links to social networking communities, in a bid to attract a younger consumer base.
Highlighting the potential profits to be reaped by mobile music services, former chairman and CEO of the EMI Group, Eric Nicoli, said: "You only have to look at Japan, where 90 per cent of all digital music sold is downloaded on to phones to see what a mobile download market can be."
According to Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF), the global entertainment market is valued at $25 billion and estimates suggest that nearly half of all digital music sold is done so through mobile phones.
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