The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic , the one with “Comes with Music” service, has hit a landmark event. One million Nokia 5800s have been shipped around the world. The phone has also just been released in the UK.

It took Nokia four months to reach the million mark; the 5800 XpressMusic was released in October of 2008. It only took the original iPhone 74 days to hit one million, and one weekend for the iPhone 3G to accomplish the same feat. Like many phone manufacturers, Nokia entered the touchscreen phone market after Apple changed the game. The 5800 is their first major attempt at a touchscreen phone.

Nokia has taken the mobile world’s centerstage today with the slew of announcements it made during the Nokia Remix event which happened simultaneously in London and Singapore. An enhanced S60 mobile platform, an online music store a la iTunes and, of course, a new music phone with touchscreen features, a la, well what else, but the iPhone.

The enhanced S60 Mobile Platform

Nokia’s S60 mobile platform which runs on Symbian OS finally gets a much needed upgrade in its 5th iteration. Key features of this fifth edition S60 is none other than touch UI and support for tactile feedback. This simply means that Nokia mobile phones using the S60 OS will now have touchscreen features similar to the iPhone.

Likewise, the S60 is also bringing enhanced web browsing capabilities to the soon to be released S60 mobile phone. This is made possible through Adobe Flash Lite 3 support. More details after the break.

Seems folks like a bit of music with their mobile phone, who knew? Sony Ericsson (“SE”) announced they will join the growing list of manufacturers that offer some kind of music service with their phones. Designed to compete with Nokia’s cleverly named “comes with music,” SE plans to begin the service in Sweden, then expand to Western Europe.

The service will be an all-you-can-eat unlimited music subscription and should roll out mid-way through 2009; Rome wasn’t build in a day. Nokia’s service starts up next month in the UK. Nokia’s plan is expected to cost 70 pounds extra, though there is some belief the cost will be rolled into a contract price.

Manufacturers chase customers

Hit more to see if this phenom is coming to the US

Nokia is poised to release its new “Comes With Music” phones on October 17th in Britain. The phones will come with a subscription music service that will allow users to keep any song they obtain through it for 12 months. The service will come with every phone, with nothing mentioned about payment. So far, three major studios have signed on for the project: Universal, Sony BMG and Warner Music Group. Seems like a fairly good push to start with.

According to the Reuters reports, the music companies are hoping this will diminish the popularity of Apple’s iTunes Music Store. I don’t see why, but music publishers don’t seem to really like Apple too much lately. Maybe they don’t like making slightly less money? iTunes is the biggest music seller out there at the moment (well, in America at least, not too sure about worldwide), but this Nokia subscription plan may take a bit away from that. If the iPhone and other lower-end phones have shown anything, it’s that people don’t mind listening to music on cellphones.

There are a few problems with the service that can be a bit off a turn-off with the service, though…

Nokia will soon be launching its “Comes With Music” service to the UK market. The music service will provide users of specific Nokia handsets with one year of unlimited access to the Nokia Music Store catalog. Good news is, users can keep all downloaded tracks for more than one year. To kick off the opening of the “Comes With Music” service, Nokia has enlisted Carphone Warehouse in UK to offer the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic “Comes With Music” edition. According to Nokia, lucky users who will buy the Nokia 5310 will get “unprecedented freedom” to find and listen to music from the Nokia Music Store catalog.

The Nokia Comes With Music service has just gained another veritable client to its name. Sony BMG apparently found it OK to offer their music for free, since many others are doing it already and you there’s really no way to stop piracy anyway. So now we can expect BMG hits to be available from more »

Nokia’s “Comes With Music” offer sounds real nice up front, but it does have its limits, most notably the DRM, which a lot of current services seem to be moving away from. The service was originally announced last December and is still expected to launch in mid-2008, but an official date has not been announced. more »