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Rory Cellan-Jones

Who will be humming Nokia's tune?

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 2 Oct 08, 21:28 GMT

It's supposed to be the biggest launch in digital music since Apple opened the iTunes store but until now we've been missing some key facts about Nokia's "Comes With Music" plan - such as what it will cost. Now we've got those details and can work out whether it will really change the world - or at least give Apple a run for its money. For that to happen, the service needs to satisfy three sets of people with very different interests - the record labels, the mobile phone industry and the music buying public.

The consumers

Let's start with the most important group. They are being told there's now the promise of "free" music with a mobile phone, as many tracks as they can download in a year - and a music collection they can keep forever. None of that of course is quite true.

The first handset to feature "Comes With Music" will cost £129.95 and will be sold just as a pay-as-you-go phone - indicative of the audience it's aimed at. But without the music the Nokia 5310 can be got for around £70 - so in effect you're paying £60 for a year's downloads. Not bad - but your collection will be hedged around with restrictions. It will come wrapped in DRM, which means it can't be played on an iPod if that is your music player of choice. It will be restricted to two devices, your phone and a computer which both have to be registered with Nokia.

Once the year is up, you keep the music - but on those devices. If you buy a new computer - or Nokia handset - within two years you can transfer the music to them. What you don't have is the real ownership that you get with DRM-free music. Still, parents who are worried about their teenagers file-sharing may decide that buying them a mobile with music is quite a cost effective way of keeping them the right side of the law.

The music industry

Desperate for an alternative to Apple, the big record labels have been doing deals left, right and centre, but they must be hoping that mobile music is their best hope of a new business model. Nokia has far more customers worldwide than Apple, and many of them are from the generation which has grown up with the idea that music is something you get free from the internet. What we don't know is what kind of bargain has been struck with Nokia and the mobile operators - in other words, how that £60 will be shared out between the labels, tthe retailer, and everyone else who wants a bit. And will artists be rewarded for each free donwload - or will the DRM reveal how often every track is played, with bands getting a share related to their popularity? As Apple's current row over royalties from iTunes shows, there's plenty of scope for discord.

The mobile industry

For the handset makers the network operators and the retailers, what's not to like about the idea of building the digital music platform of the future? Nokia's plan doesn't allow users to download direct to the phone, so there's no extra data traffic for the networks to "monetise", but then again they will presumbly get their cut from the extra cost of the phone. Now that 5Mp cameras have become old hat, music will become the key marketing tool for new handsets, and a way of tieing customers in to a longer relationship. And don't you bet that all those dull old telecoms executives have cast envious looks at the way Apple has become even cooler by its association with the music business? Watch out for the Brit awards next year - the event will be packed with men in suits talking about ARPU, HSPA and MVNOs. Very rock'n'roll.

Maggie Shiels

Valley Girls

  • Maggie Shiels
  • 2 Oct 08, 11:40 GMT

Silicon Valley has a male testosterone driven image. It is a fact pure and simple that the chino brigade outnumbers the fairer sex in the boardroom and on the high tech shop floor.

Studies have shown that about 20% of IT jobs are held by women and an even smaller proportion occupy a C-level office. A report last year by UC Davis showed that despite Silicon Valley's cutting edge image it ranked dead last for female execs. A mere 9% in case you are wondering.

A while back California Congresswoman Jackie Speier said "The growth of women in executive offices and board rooms is as slow as molasses."

When I was here in 2000, there were a small number of very able women getting the job done. From Meg Whitman at eBay to Carol Bartz at Autodesk and Carly Fiorina at HP. Though her role was controversial to say the least and she was eventually driven out of her job.

Despite the dismal results of the UC Davis study, women in senior roles certainly seem to be much more visible than they were back in the dotcom craze. They occupy starring roles at conferences and grace the front pages of magazines and newspapers like never before. But the question still remains as to what kind of dent they have made in that glass ceiling.

The Valley Girls series isn't so much concerned with answering that question as meeting some of the women who are trying to make their mark and shape the culture of the Valley and the industry.

This is not going to be a crusade. The issue of gender is intrinsic to the series but will not dominate. The aim is to try and lift the veil on who some of those female execs are and understand what drives them.

Padma WarriorThis week we meet Padma Warrior, a rare breed in the Valley as a female chief technology officer of a global company with more than 66,000 employees.

This self confessed geek joined Cisco less than a year ago from Motorola and talks to us about her passion for technology, her inspiration and her vision for the future.

Your suggestions for who you would like included in the series are more than welcome.

Rory Cellan-Jones

A meek new Microsoft?

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 2 Oct 08, 09:20 GMT

For years he has lived in the shadow of Bill Gates - in the public's mind at least - but the man who bustled into a room at Microsoft's London offices for our 20 minute interview was certainly no shrinking violet.

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Steve Ballmer is a confident, extrovert character, and a more natural communicator than Microsoft's founder - but the most arresting line from our interview seemed to reflect a new humility at a company seen by some as the playground bully of the software world.

"We may be the "David" on this particular battle with "Goliath," he said, referring to the contest between Microsoft and Google in the field of search. He went on to admit that Microsoft had a "single-digit" share of the search market, that it had started investing in search too late, and talked with envy of Google being the "cute darling" of the technology world, just as Microsoft had been years ago before it ran into what he described as "legal things".

Later, when I asked whether it worried him that consumers didn't seem to love Microsoft he even went as far as talking of people having a "love/hate relationship" with Windows PCs, though he insisted they loved what their computers did, even if they lacked affection for the company behind it.

So does this mean that Microsoft has been transformed into an ever so humble little business, happy enough to tick over, and with no great ambitions to grow further? Not a bit of it. Mr Ballmer went on to explain that he was aiming Microsoft right at Google's search and advertising heartland - and even suggested that search was in desperate need of a bit of innovation.

He pointed out that it worked now much the same as it did five or six years ago, and it was time to move on. "Search is my favourite business," he said, explaining that when you had virtually nothing the only way was up: "Everything is possible, we have nothing to lose."

When I suggested that this plan had gone "pear-shaped" (does that expression work on the West Coast, I wonder?) when he'd failed to buy Yahoo earlier this year, Mr Ballmer said that deal had been "a tactic not a strategy". What the strategy is that will turn Microsoft into a force to be reckoned with in both search - and more importantly for the bottom line - online advertising, remains to be seen. But to underline those ambitions, Microsoft today unveils plans to invest in new R&D in the search field in Europe.

And there was nothing humble about Steve Ballmer's plans in the mobile field. Here there was a sideswipe at Google's Android operating system - a version 1.0 and it looks like it, was the verdict - and a dismissal of the idea that handset manufacturers would prefer an open-source solution to Windows Mobile. And where would Microsoft be compared with Android, Blackberry and Apple's iPhone (I left Nokia out of it) two or three years from now? Number one, according to Mr B.

Later this month at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft will outline ambitious plans to move its business away from what Mr Ballmer described as the "software on a DVD" model towards "cloud computing", where applications and user data are stored on huge server farms. It's another area where Google appears to have moved more nimbly.

Microsoft could just sit and watch the billions flow in from Windows and Office for years to come. But this Goliath of the software world has obviously been wounded by Google's search slingshot - and is promising to hit back.

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