Nokia India on Tuesday announced a strategic partnership with Idea Cellular to allow Nokia Store and Nokia Music service easily accessible to millions of Idea Cellular consumers. The step is taken as a part of its strategy of connecting the next billion to the internet. The service will go live by the end of this week.

The partnership will allow Idea Cellular consumers using Nokia phones to get the best Indian and global premium content from Nokia Store and Nokia Music. The consumers will be charged through their prepaid or postpaid accounts. Idea has over 115 million users on its network.

A range of Nokia Asha and Lumia devices come with the bundled unlimited music service subscription ranging from several months to a year. On expiry, Idea consumers will now have renewal subscriptions options for the Nokia Music Store for three duration’s viz., 7 days for Rs 50, 30 days for Rs. 99 and 90 days for Rs. 250. Taxes and data charges are separate as applicable.  

Globally, integrated operator billing has provided a significant momentum to the digital mobile ecosystem, by enhancing consumer experience and returns for content publishers. It not only makes the mobile payment experience easy and seamless for consumers, but also  provides a dependable and secure transaction model to those who do not own or are reticent about using their credit cards to make online purchases.

“This partnership democratizes access to the best local and global content by making it available across both Nokia smartphone and feature phones with affordable pricing and a seamless payment experience. We believe integrated operator billing is very relevant for a market like India where penetration of alternate billing mechanisms is limited,” said Viral Oza, Director Marketing, Nokia India.

Speaking at the announcement, Sashi Shankar, Chief Marketing Officer, Idea Cellular, said “Music & Entertainment is at the core of Idea’s marketing strategy to promote value added services, brand communication, and building customer connect, which has resulted in rapid growth in data usage on our network. Our initiative with Nokia will enable affordable and easy access to music and entertainment based apps on the Nokia platform.”

The Nokia Store currently offers over 120,000 pieces of content on Nokia phones. This includes applications, games, videos, podcasts, productivity tools, web and location-based services among others. Globally, the Nokia Store drives more than 15 million downloads per day and India currently sees over 80 million downloads per month.

The Nokia Music Store is the largest online repository of legal digital music in India with a catalogue of over 4.5 million DRM free songs, including across 16 Indian languages, and 1.4 million songs downloads a day.