Nokia's just following Apple to the bank

 

Nokia's just following Apple to the bank

When a reporter from a German newspaper asked Nokia's CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo whether Nokia would demand a percentage of sales from its carrier partners like Apple does, Kallasvuo more or less said "No, not like Apple does."

"As far as mobile phones are concerned we are sticking with our old business model--that is, we get paid for our devices," Kallasvuo told the newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. "But for providing new services we are seriously considering a shared turnover model."

Nokia has become increasingly bullish when it comes to mobile Internet service offerings: the company just launched a new mobile streaming video service called Medeo. It also recently announced an unlimited mobile music download service called Nokia Comes With Music. The services launched after Nokia announced its new Ovi mobile Internet services platform.

The suggestion that Kallasvuo's "new" strategy for revenue share agreements with carriers is largely thanks to Apple's watershed deals with AT&T, O2 and others is rather far-fetched. Sure, Apple's rumored 30 percent cut of iPhone revenue marked a change in not only how deals between device makers and carriers share revenue, but also in how much the device maker gets. But Nokia is not lock-step behind Apple on this one.

Kallasvuo clearly states that he's not looking to change his existing business model for handset sales, and while he mentions that Nokia is considering a "shared turnover model" for services, that sounds like a revenue share agreement, which most mobile content service providers ink with carriers. Apple's iPhone deals bring the company an unconfirmed percentage of revenue from each iPhone customer on its carrier partners' networks. Nokia is simply saying that they want to share revenue from subscribers who use Nokia's services.

So, Nokia does not look to be following Apple's lead when it comes to the "how to" of structuring deals with carriers. We'll have to wait and see if Nokia follows Apple on the "how much."

What do you think? Will Nokia really follow Apple's lead or is it just looking for more lucrative rev-share deals? -Brian