No iTunes Deal for Nokia N91 Music Phone

Nokia says there's no deal to include the popular iTunes Music Store in its forthcoming N91 multimedia phone, but third-party developers could put the two together.

Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia said today that it doesn’t have a deal with Apple Computer to include the industry-leading iTunes Music Store music download service in its forthcoming N91 multimedia phones. However, the design of the phone could easily enable third parties—even Apple itself—to build an application which could let the phones access online services, including the iTunes store.

The Finnish daily paper Taloussanomat reported this week that iTunes would ship as an default feature of the N91 model. Nokia is the world’s leading mobile phone handset maker, but rival Motorola’s long-anticipated iTunes-enabled cell phone is expected to be available to U.S. consumer by the end of September 2005.

Nokia announced the N91 phone in April, 2005, and is expected to be available to consumers by the end of the year. The N91 phone is intended as a portable music player as much as a handset, including a 4GB hard drive capable of holding as many as 3,000 songs, a 3.5mm headset jack, dedicated music keys, USB 2.0 for synchronizing with computers, and a reported 12 hours of continuous music playback on a single battery charge; the phone will also support a wide range of audio formats, including MP3, M4A, AAC and WMA. In addition, the N91 will offer Bluetooth, high-speed WCDMA and WLAN connectivity, a 2 megapixel camera phone, email and Web browsing support, and wireless playlist sharing.

Music-enabled mobile phone are expected to be the primary competitor to Apple’s wildly successful iPod and other portable music players. A Nokia spokesman said the company does not want to make exclusive arrangements with any digital music store, leaving the choice of music purchasing up to the consumer. Of course, mobile phone network operators may have the option of entering into exclusive arrangements with music download services, locking their customers into particular services.