Nokia To Use Microsoft Digital Music Software

Posted by timothy on Monday February 14, 2005 @06:51AM from the battle-lines dept.

BCMM writes "From an article on Reuters: 'The world's largest mobile phone maker, Nokia, and software giant Microsoft struck a deal on Monday to make it easier for consumers to buy digital music on-line and play it back on their handsets ... Nokia agreed to put Microsoft's music player software into its handsets.'" (The BBC covers the deal as well.) "The articles don't mention what sort of DRM or licensing will be involved." jfanning writes "Two new Series 60 phones were also announced that ship soon and support WMA, the 6680 and 6681. I haven't seen it mentioned clearly yet, but also the Media Transfer Protocol has been licenced, so that could mean the phone will show up as a media device in Windows Media 10." jfanning mentions also that Nokia has licensed the Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync protocol for business phones.

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Because after all, we all love... by Tackhead · 2005-02-14 06:58 · Score: 5, Insightful

> struck a deal on Monday to make it easier for consumers to buy digital music on-line and play it back on their handsets ...
...aah, in rapture to Beethoven's Ninth, compressed to a 32kbps mono .WMV, gloriously rendered on a tinny piezoelectric speaker.
Turning phones into music rental devices seems to fall under the "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" category.
Even if you stuck a headphone jack into your phone to get around the shitty piezo speaker problem, consider that if you actually plan to use your phone for something (oh, I don't know, say, talking on it?), why would you want to wear down its battery by playing music on it?