Nokia N91 Music Phone Pushed to 2006

By Nate Mook | Published September 20, 2005, 1:35 PM

Nokia on Tuesday officially said it was delaying the much-anticipated N91 music phone until the first quarter of next year, citing the desire to make the phone work with as many music providers as possible and hold thousands of songs. Motorola's ROKR iTunes phone can store a maximum of 100 songs.

Nokia recently unveiled its 6630 Music Edition phone that supports MP3, AAC and WMA. The company told Reuters that Microsoft's DRM was the primary reason for the delay, saying it needed more time to ensure a solid implementation of the copyright protection software. The N91 boasts a 4GB hard drive for music and features built-in support for Wi-Fi.

Comments

The N91 is a red herring - by the time it's ready for release, Nokia will have announced 4 more N series phones, some of which will expand on the N91's feature set.

The reason for the delay is actually making Series 60 version 3 work properly on Symbian OS 9.1 - the same problem Nokia have had since they announced this phone!

WMA DRM is not the reason - Sendo did WMA DRM on Symbian OS 6.1, so with the added DRM features of 9.1, it should have been dead easy for Nokia!

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That is the worst excuse I have ever heard, go ahead and release it without the stupid microsoft DRM included. We will love you for it.
I spend days converting my CD's to MP3 and if this phone does not accept MP3 it will fail miserabley.

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Argh. Damn you Nokia, if you ever do release this phone I imagine it won't be long until someone releases a flash memory based 4gb phone that will make the N91 obsolete. Stop screwing around and put it out!

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What did you expect? Nokia has always been a trailing company in the technology stakes, choosing form over function every time.

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