Nokia, the world’s leading mobile phone manufacturer, has announced the launch of a digital music portal aimed at competing with Apple’s iTunes Internet music store for downloadable music materials.
Nokia’s new portal will be called Ovi, što means “door” in Finnish, and will feature the Nokia Music Store, a virtual music store with a catalog that will be competitive with Apple’s, as stated by the Finnish technology group. This web store, which will be launched in the fourth quarter of this year, will contain millions of music tracks, said Nokia’s CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. "Our goal is to make all the music in the world accessible to everyone," he said.
Initially, the Nokia Music Store will be available only in selected European markets, after which it will expand to other European and Asian markets in the following months. The price of singles on Ovi.com will be one euro, while the price of entire albums will be 10 euros, and users will be able to access it from their mobile phones and computers. The announcement of this project follows last year’s acquisition of the digital music distributor Loudeye by Nokia for approximately 60 million dollars, and is further evidence of the company’s efforts to move away from the title of "regular" mobile phone manufacturer.
