Considering the unabashed gate crashing of Nokia in the mobile music business and the expected entry of Sony Ericsson's music downloading service, it is very apparent that mobile operators are a little bit out of tune.



According to an article in Fortune, these new music plans are direct threats to the traditional cellular business wherein mobile operators offer services such as music. Thanks to Apple's iPhone the whole playing field tilted.

Apple invaded their turf by bringing the popular iPhone to Europe in November, along with a business model that sucks music users away from carriers and onto Apple's iTunes service. If the handset makers want to compete against the iPhone, it would help if they had their own music services. That's especially true considering that most mobile music in Europe and the U.S. lands on phones via sideloading (transferring tunes from PCs to handsets).

Maybe this is a wake up call to the not-so-customer-friendly mobile operators to use their creativity and cook up a new way to offer music to the mobile consumers.