Nokia Comes with Music fails to hit right note

However, it said that it will not only continue to provide the service but also expand it in more countries.

"In terms of innovation, Comes with Music is a significant shift for both consumers and the industry alike," MusicAlly quoted a Nokia spokesman as saying. "Nokia will continue to bring new services to market, and we will continue to add further countries and partners to our Comes with Music rollout."

Earlier in April, Nokia Music vice president Lenn Pryor was quoted as saying that no matter what, Nokia will not give up on Comes with Music despite the response it received in the UK was worse than expected.

"The UK was our first launch market, and we learned a lot from that experience," Pryor told the Telegraph. "We learned that the right device is just as important as what we're offering. When we launched in the UK, the timing was such that we launched it with two devices that were slightly out of date."

However, Pryor said the company has learned its lesson and "subsequent launches in other countries with the [touch-screen] Nokia 5800, the hero device, are doing very, very well."

"We won't give up on Comes with Music, or the UK," he added.

Moreover, in order to spur interest in the service, Nokia is also offering its earliest adopters in the UK a free 90-day extension of Comes with Music service to commemorate the first anniversary of the service in the UK.

However, industry analysts feel the numbers do not bode well for the company as UK users, the first to approach the end of their built-in service, may choose not to renew their subscriptions.

"With other services making round in the market such as Spotify, Napster, 7Digital, Sky Songs and iTunes, people today have more choices and unless Comes with Music cleans up its act, Nokia, which is wading in the red, will be staring down the barrel," an independent tech analyst said. Nokia reported a net loss of £838 million in the September quarter as against a profit of £1 billion for the same quarter a year ago.

The analyst said Nokia has been slow in educating people about the service and though attractive, many have been left confused. "Lots of folk are not certain about what Comes with Music offers. What do you get? What happens to the tracks downloaded? Do you keep paying every time you download? These are some of the questions still hounding Nokia users today," he said, adding that though the rollout of the service by Nokia has been fast by industry standards, yet, challenges presented by DRM-locked tracks, localising content, a limited range of Come with Music compatible phones, and free music streaming offered by other companies stood as roadblocks on the way.