Nokia Unveils Music Store, New Phones

As expected, the phone giant announced today that it's resurrecting the dormant N-Gage gaming platform, but it also had a few more tricks up its sleeves: a massive music store primed to compete with iTunes, plus some sleek new music and gaming phones.

The New York Times already spilled most of the beans about the new N-Gage platform; meanwhile, the music store—called, appropriately enough, the Nokia Music Store—will launch in Europe this fall, with a U.S. launch expected early next year. Just like on the iTunes Store, you'll be able to browse a catalog of millions of tunes from the major labels and independent artists. Individual songs will retail for €1 each, with full albums going for €10; you'll also be able to stream unlimited tunes to your PC for €10 a month.

According to Nokia's announcement, Music Store users will also be able to shop for songs on "optimized Nokia devices" such as the newly-announced N81 music phone and an 8GB version of the N95 slider, or transfer tunes from their PCs to the new 5310 or 5610 XpressMusic phones. The music tracks themselves will be released in 192Kbps WMA format; no word on any DRM-free plans. There's also no sign of videos or movies in this initial announcement, although knowing Nokia (which has made no secret of its goal of topping iTunes), I'm sure that both will be coming soon.

Of course, the killer feature would be if you could download the music store application to your old Nokia phone, although I'm guessing it would only work with the more advanced Series 60 devices like the N95 slider. Combined with the new N-Gage platform, Nokia phones are suddenly looking pretty exciting. Apple had better hurry up with over-the-air music and gaming downloads for the iPhone (or, in the absence of 3G, at least side-loaded games), and fast.

Meanwhile, about those new phones. First up is the N81 (pictured above), a widely rumored music slider with dedicated controls for both music and gaming. Packing a 2.8-inch QVGA display, a media player, built-in GPS, Wi-Fi, and a 5MP camera, the N81 will work with both the new music store and the N-Gage platform. The 4GB version will retail for $500, with the 8GB going for $600, and both should arrive in the U.S. before the year is up.

Also new is an 8GB version of the N95, which will come with a slightly larger screen than the original; unfortunately, it's also stuck with the original's EDGE-only data access here in the States. (That said, Nokia has also announced a 3G version of the N95 for North America.) The 8GB N95 will come with a $750 sticker prices (yikes) plus music store and N-Gage support, and should hit our shores sometime this fall/winter.

Related:
Press release [Nokia]
Nokia Reviving N-Gage Gaming Service [Yahoo! Tech]