Music Ally

Nokia has been claiming that its first Comes With Music phone has been a big hit with mums, but there’s an increasing amount of evidence that sales of the 5310 XpressMusic have been below expectations.

UK retailer Carphone Warehouse has just slashed the price of the handset by a third in an effort to shift stock, while The Times’ report quotes more analysts suggesting that sales have been disappointing.

Forrester analyst Mark Mulligan suggests CWM simply needs more time and consumer education. We agree, but also think the 5310 itself isn’t a hugely appealing handset, and suspect sales may pick up once more attractive phones are being sold with CWM on-board.

Check out our first impressions of the 5310 and Comes With Music, when we tested it last October.

As you’ll have seen from our earlier post, Nokia announced that its Comes With Music service will launch next month in the UK, with a special-edition 5310 handset to be sold through Carphone Warehouse on pay-as-you-go contracts.

Now Carphone Warehouse has announced some of the small print, revealing that users will be responsible for all data charges incurred from using the service (which, if they download tracks over the air on pay-as-you-go data rates, could be steep). It’s also given more details on what happens when users’ Comes With Music 12-month subscription expires, in terms of keeping their tracks.

The full ‘Notes To Editors’ section of Carphone’s press release is pasted in over the jump: check it out by clicking the link below.

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