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Tuesday 15th February 2005

Nokia and Microsoft declare truce in multimedia war 3:14PM, Tuesday 15th February 2005

The world's biggest software company and the world's biggest maker of mobile phones have signed a deal declaring a truce in the DRM and multimedia war that threatened to further split the market for music downloads

Microsoft and Nokia have announced they are working together so that customers of the new mobile music service from Nokia and Loudeye can listen to their purchases on both Nokia handsets and on Microsoft Windows XP-based PCs.

The mobile music service from Nokia and Loudeye is based on the OMA DRM and MPEG AAC standards and enables a mobile telco to offer a white label solution to their customers so they

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can search, listen, download and pay for music.

The two companies have also signed a long-term agreement to work together on digital media format support. The deal means that Nokia will support Windows Media Audio, Windows Media Digital Rights Management 10 and Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) on Nokia phones able to play music. Microsoft for its part will support for Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Digital Rights Management and the MPEG Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) family of codecs in Windows Media Player via a plug-in.

Anssi Vanjoki from Nokia's Multimedia Business Group said `This agreement makes it easier for consumers to download music they want to listen to, without having to worry about whether or not the file format is supported. The broad reaching popularity of Windows Media Player, its comprehensive feature set and support for service integration made it a natural choice for us when looking at the PC component of the mobile music solution we are offering to mobile operators.`

Steve Malone

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