Nokia Takes Qualcomm To Court, Cuts Jobs; Acquires Digital Music Provider Loudeye
Don’t ask anyone working at Nokia, “What’s new?”. They’re liable to talk your ear off.
To start with, Nokia’s gone to court to try to resolve a long-standing dispute with Qualcomm over royalty payments for CDMA cellular technology. Nokia says it can’t make money building CDMA handsets and it accuses Qualcomm of not negotiating royalties in good faith.
At the same time, Nokia is laying off 550 employees at its San Diego plant as it prepares to stop making those CDMA handsets.
And while all that is going on, Nokia has made a deal to acquire Loudeye, a digital music provider/platform service, for $60 million. Nokia says it has tens of millions of devices out there (particularly its N series handsets) that play music, and it wants to be able to download songs to all of those devices. This would include either wireless downloads, or downloads through a PC. Nokia’s music service would be ready to roll out next year, if all goes according to plan.
Since Loudeye already provides the technological backbone for 60 different music services in 20 countries, Nokia can make a credible attempt to compete with Apple’s iTunes.
And if that’s not enough, Nokia also sent out a congratulatory note to Sprint Nextel on that provider’s announcement that it will develop a WiMax wireless broadband system. Nokia figures to get a substantial chunk of the business, since it’s one of the founding partners in WiMax.
[via Nokia, Phone Scoop]
Leave a Reply