Orange wary of Nokia Music Store, threatens to avoid N81
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Aug 30th 2007 5:19PM
posted Aug 30th 2007 5:19PM
Genuine concern for the "customer experience" or genuine concern for its music revenue stream? It's hard to gauge Orange's true intentions here, but basically, the European carrier is threatening to avoid carrying the 8GB variant of Nokia's N81 -- the one with the Nokia Music Store on it instead of Orange's own -- on fears that they haven't seen the service yet and have no idea whether it'll be easy for customers to use. A rather testy memo sent from Orange to Nokia reveals that Orange has given Nokia until August 31 (that's tomorrow!) to offer it the opportunity to test the Music Store side by side with its own service; if Nokia declines, Orange will respond in kind by dropping its planned order for a crapload of "exclusive blue" N81s. Given that the N81 is seen right now as the cornerstone of both Nokia's renewed music and gaming efforts, we're guessing the manufacturer would see a refusal by a major carrier on its own turf to be a slap in the face and a major blow to its plans -- so we're cautiously optimistic that things are gonna work out. In the meantime, Orange, skim as much music revenue as ya can.[Via mocoNews]
I find it amazing how little these big companies talk. They work in a vacuum & are then shocked when others don't love their plans.
AT&T, care to step in? I'd love to replace my N80IE with this one...
at&t support Nokia? Won't happen since they are in the Iphone camp, and since they are in the business of crippling good Nokia phones.
Nokia seems to have these issues with operators all the time.
Orange might be easy but when it comes to Vodafone that wants to
sell of the content for their phones then Nokia is in trouble.
Could be that Vodafone isn't happy bunny atm, just after returning all of Nokia N76 phones and the other quality failures with N-series.
I wouldn't be suprised if big carriers will Nokia to remove their music shop integration from the phones they accept to take for sell.
It's not hard at all to gauge Orange's true intentions...
This is only about Orange selling the N81 with contracts, right? IE, there's nothing to stop people buying the N81 separately and using it on Orange's network...
..or am I wrong?
seems accurate to me. thats what i was thinking. nokia sells phones directly, so just buy them from nokia.
nokia should just remove it from the phones, and when someone registers their phone, mail or email the customer an invitation to try the nokia store. if its not on the phone, users should be able to just download and install it.
seems simple to me.
Orange selling 'exclusive blue' phones?!?! Those crazy Europeans 8D
Who cares about Orange? With 16$ per month for 30MB they have made sure to take the fun out of any data transfers over their network especially given their charges when you go over that 30MB. So I dont think Nokia is losing much if Orange cancels their phone as I doubt many would buy it if they are on Orange anyway.
Indeed.