"The road map announced in London is an effort to weave all of Nokia's software and services into a seamless package. Researchers have been toiling for years in Nokia's labs on such technology, and more recently the company has been on a furious shopping spree to beef up its portfolio. In October, 2006, for instance, it bought an iTunes rival called Loudeye, the largest independent music distribution platform, for $60 million.
The same month it snapped up gate5, a maker of navigation software for mobile phones, and in July of this year, it bought media-sharing site Twango—both for undisclosed prices. No other handset maker has made a comparable effort to profit in mobile communications by distributing content, not just hardware. 'Devices alone are not enough anymore,' says Kallasvuo. 'Consumers want a complete experience.'
Europe's mobile operators are paying close attention because their own efforts to launch digital music stores and other data services have largely failed. Yet without such offerings, there's no way subscribers are going to run up monthly data charges as high as the operators are counting on. 'Mobile operators around the world have invested a fortune on networks, services, and marketing, and it has been a gigantic disaster,' says John Strand, head of Copenhagen-based mobile consultancy Strand Consult. 'Not a single one has succeeded with a "walled-garden" strategy,' which directs users to a closed set of services rather than to the wide-open Internet."
