VS

Get ready to rumble!

Last week, Nokia announced that it was buying the digital music site Loudeye, a US firm that is active in Europe through its affiliate OD2. This means competition for Apple, who so far, is the leading name in the music downloading business. According to Nokia, the acquisition will "offer consumers a comprehensive mobile music experience, including devices, applications and the ability to purchase digital music".

Nokia's move is definitely bad news for the fruit company, who initiated a technical revolution with its iPod products. It doesn't help at all, either, to know that Apple incurred the ire of several European governments for monopolizing its propriety technology by creating a software that would limit the iPod's downloading capacities exclusively to iTunes.

Because of this development, Apple may just be forced to work double-time on a new iPhone to fend off the threat. Furthermore, experts believe that the company might have to be forced to offer iTunes to other companies under license. Steve Jobs of Apple has already initiated steps to work with mobile phone manufacturer Motorola, but the results were inconclusive.

But while this turn of events is making Apple break out into cold sweat, this is certainly a boost for Nokia. Mark Mulligan of Jupiter Research explains, "This is all about boosting Nokia's digital music footprint, primarily though not exclusively across mobile."

Oh, but we all need some good competition every once in a while.