Today Intel and Nokia merged their existing smartphone and mobile device operating systems (Moblin and Maemo respectively). I'll be brief as I'm at the MWC event right now (see my tweets for latest analysis). The target devices range from smartphones -- or mobile computers in Nokia's current positioning -- netbooks, tablets, in-car entertainment among others.

This is a bold play that places MeeGo into a competitive position with Android, iPhone OS, Google's Chrome and even desktop software like Ubuntu (as well as the mushrooming moble-centric smartphone software like Palm's WebOS, Samsung bada and Windows Phone).

Intel's support will raise the ability of the new platform to attract device makers as well as the app developers that every smartphone and smart mobile platform desperately needs to be competitive.

They have lots in common: Both are Linux-based; both predominantly target mobile devices; both aim to deliver outstanding rich consumer Internet experiences; and both have been more talk than action to date. Nokia needs to shift step quickly from talking to walking and even better running or the high end market in Europe will be dominated by the same players as in North America and Nokia will have to pursue a winback strategy. It's taken Nokia nearly five years since the first Maemo device shipped to launch the first phone, the N900, and that is not the complete product -- as Nokia concede -- impressive although it nevertheless is (read my first take on the N900 in this Forrester report).

Real Networks yesterday announced that they intend to spin-off music subscription service Rhapsody as a stand alone business.  Rhapsody has long been held up as the best of breed music service, but in the age of Spotify and Comes With Music it and other premium rentals have increasingly struggled to maintain relevancy.  Spotify and Comes With Music each may have fundamental business issues and are very different offerings, but they both provide unlimited music free at point of consumption.  Once you have that proposition in the marketplace selling 9.99 rented streams looses its shine, however good the discovery and usability may be.

This time two years ago Rhapsody, Napster and Yahoo had about 1.8 million paying subscribers between them.  Since then Yahoo got out of the game (passing its subs onto Rhapsody), Napster got sold and the total count is now around 1.3 million. So just as the music industry is meant to be booming online, its premium tier sheds over a quarter of its value across its heavyweight proponents. 

The simple fact is that charging 9.99 or more a month for music that often only sits on your PC is not a mass market value proposition.  It’s great for aficionados but mass market consumers aren’t used to buying music that way. 

So is this the end for subscriptions?  No, not at all, in fact they’re doing better than ever, it’s just the old guard that is struggling to keep pace.  A new generation of subscription services are being built that place portability at their core and that often hide some or all of the end-cost to consumers.

Let’s take a quick look at the numbers, here are total paid subscribers by territory (all numbers are approximate):