Nokia Design New Touch Screen Phone XpressMusic 5800
By Azam on October 3, 2008 
Nokia announced its first touch screen-based phone, the XpressMusic 5800 an entry into the highly competitive smart phone market. Nokia 5800 is an answer to the iPhone success with touch screen and user interface making the mobile application and access to mobile web more appealing. The reviews out are mixed and most will say the 5800 does not compare with the benchmark iPhone has set.
The Nokia Xpress Music 5800 is more geared to Music and younger audience than the iPhone. Although, the Nokia 5800 comes with video and flash which are 2 important features lacking in the iPhone. Nokia XpressMusic 5800 better address the competition with comes with music that could be an industry game changer and address Apples dominance in the music market with iTunes and Apple music devices iPod & iTouch.
Nokia said at an analyst and media event in London it would start selling the phone shortly, pricing it at 279 euros ($395) excluding subsidies and taxes, which it said was roughly half the price of the other main touch-screen phones currently on the market.
Nokia said all major music labels and most independent labels will offer their tracks as part of Nokia’s ‘free’ music bundle “Comes with Music,” raising the total number of tracks to around 5 million.
Apple controls slightly more than half of global digital music sales through its iTunes store.
Nokia said it aims to offer the music service next year on Apple’s home ground in the United States, the world’s largest music market.
“In a market where price and selection are so much more important than brand to consumers, Apple cannot count on retaining users when competing with an offering which seems free to the end user,” said Strategy Analytics’ David MacQueen.
“Comes with Music” and similar products from other hardware vendors could help the music industry make up for falling CD sales and cut illegal downloads.
Nokia’s package will differ from others on the market since users can keep all the music they have downloaded during the subscription period of 12 or 18 months. There are no charges for tracks downloaded as the cost is bundled to the phone price.
Analysts and music industry players said Nokia’s offering could bring free music to millions of consumers and change the music industry significantly.
“The introduction of mobile handsets featuring unlimited music downloads out-of-the-box will bring about a fundamental change in the way the mass-market consumes digital music,” said Rob Lewis, chief executive officer of British digital music firm Omnifone.
The music download package is Nokia’s first major push into the services business. Last year the company unveiled a revamp of its whole organization, aiming to build a new business from internet services to combat slowing growth in sales of handsets.
Nokia has acknowledged the impact Apple has made on the industry with its iPhone over the past year, saying the Cupertino, California-based computer and consumer electronics company had done the mobile phone industry “a big favor.”
“We have a new, credible competitor in this business,” Nokia Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told the Churchill Club on Wednesday, a speakers’ forum for Silicon Valley civic leaders. “Of course we need to be able to respond to any competitor and we will.”
Nokia will launch the package in Britain, the world’s third largest music market. UK retailer, Carphone Warehouse, will start selling the products on Oct 16. Nokia 5310 will sell for 130 pounds ($230), while the price for a version of Nokia’s sophisticated N95 smartphone with eight gigabytes of memory was not revealed.
Analysts said the choice of a relatively cheap model was a clear indication Nokia was trying to win over consumers who often are not paying for music but getting it through file-sharing sites on the Internet.
“If you have access to everything, what’s the need for pirated music?” said Universal’s Rob Wells.
The Specs from post in InformationWeek
The Nokia 5800 features include: 3.2-inch touch resistance screen, display packs in a massive number of pixels (640 x 360), giving it HD resolution quality, Movies looked crystal clear, as did video shot with the 5800 in video, video record at 30 frames per second, camera 3.2 megapixels and includes a Carl Zeiss lens, autofocus, and dual-LED flash. The on-screen user interface for the camera is actually quite nice, and makes some improvements that all touch-based phones should add to their camera software, such as quick access to most of the camera’s settings.
According to Nokia, the 5800 will arrive only in India, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Russia, and Spain by the end of the year. Other countries, including the United States and Canada, will have to wait until 2009.
Tags : apple, Come with Music, iPhone, iTunes, nokia, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, XpressMusic 5800