London, Oct. 3

Like a tail wagging the dog, the world’s number one maker of mobile phones, overwhelmed the global unveiling of its first smart touch phone, with an announcement that came later. The launch of a free and unlimited music download service, encompassing a repertoire running into millions of tracks, available to buyers of select Nokia handsets.

The crimson-coloured baroque interior of the Koko Club, a night club in London’s Camden Town and a popular variety theatre even 100 years ago, proved a somewhat bizarre locale for the launch of an Internet Age initiative. Analysts in the cramped and dark seating area were jabbing reports into their laptop keys to predict that the Nokia move might well change, for ever, the business model of paid popular music.

Touch-sensitive phone

The new handset launched — then 5800 XPress Music — is Nokia’s first touch-sensitive phone. It comes after rivals such as LG, Samsung and Apple with its new iPhone entered the field.

But the more sedate pace of this Scandinavian player has also ensured that it sized up the competition and added its own features: like full Web browsing including Flash content; a touch technology that is truly ‘haptic’ - that means the keys seem to kick back at your fingers — a GPS receiver and a 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics. The 8 GB internal memory can be beefed up with another 16 GB on a micro SD type memory card - which means one can store over 18,000 songs if one were a hard core music freak.

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