March 11, 2009

By By Antony Bruno, Denver

Nokia is continuing its push to establish itself as a major player in the mobile music market with an expansion of its Comes With Music service to new countries and the introduction of several new music phones.

Comes With Music - a service under which users buy a phone with a year's mobile music subscription built in - will be launched in Mexico, Italy, Sweden, Portugal, Norway and South Africa in the coming months. The company has not announced a U.S. date as of yet, but labels sources seem to feel Comes With Music will go live in this country sometime in the fall.

The new handsets include the 5730 XpressMusic phone, which features a slide out QWERTY keyboard for easier texting; the 5330 XpressMusic is a more traditional vertical slider phone; and the XpressMusic 5030 is a lower-priced model that comes with an FM receiver.

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