Here’s a question you think you know the answer to, but probably don’t. Which company sells the most portable music players?



Silly question, you probably think, it’s Apple of course. Well, actually it isn’t. In fact, in the last quarter, Nokia sold 15 million music enabled phones, which is approximately twice the number of iPods sold.


Still, Apple has the perceived leadership, and in any case its iPod products are purely for playing music. Nokia is selling hybrid products which just happen to include music abilities. So, it would perhaps be a misleading statement to say Nokia is the genuine market leader.


But then yesterday came news that the mobile phone company has forked out $60 million to buy Loudeye Corp, which distributes 1.6 million music tracks across 20 or so countries. In fact, it has the biggest music catalogue in the world - or so say some press reports.

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