Finnish vendor Nokia announced an extension of its mobile music platform on Tuesday, with the unveiling of a subscription service that allows users to keep their music.

At its annual investor day in the Netherlands, Nokia announced its ‘Comes With Music’ platform, that enables people to buy a Nokia device with a year of unlimited access to millions of tracks.

Once the year is complete, customers can keep all their music without having to worry about it disappearing when their subscription is over. [see telecoms.com for the full story]

This is very similar to Nokia’s purchase and inclusion of mapping software on high-end devices (something we discussed in the Mobile Marketing panel at the MoMo Summit). The buzz is that “it’s all about content” — that future revenues are going to be driven primarily by content.

Take a look at how Apple’s iTunes fits into its strategy: revenues are huge at 36%, but the importance is in the content’s role in driving sales of the iPod and computer hardware lines. That lesson hasn’t been lost on others. Think Amazon and Kindle, Nokia and Ovi, Sony and their upcoming revamped music store.

But is the buzz true as a trend?

What do these activities say about company strategy? Where are these players expecting their future revenues growth to come from?

1. Hardware sales? The device is the money maker, with higher prices/differentiation justified by including free content — sales of devices driven by consumer desire for the “free” (or premium) content included; or
2. Content sales? The hardware is a one-off sale, but the ongoing revenues from online content and subscription sales are the real money-maker; or
3. Something else entirely?

It’s clear that the future of computing in general — the big future — is in mobile. Desktop computers, home media centers, and laptops will be nice CE moneymaking appliances, like microwaves and large-screen TVs. Sure, they’re more necessary than luxuries like designer espresso machines, but you can live without them, for example, if you are struggling to pay off student loans.

Mobiles will be like refrigerators or washing machines. You just can’t manage without them. That’s already true now, but at the moment it’s more of a psychological need to not miss anything. As mobile email improves, flat data plans roll out, web browsing becomes usable, phone memory grows to accommodate video and audio entertainment realistically, downloading becomes easier rather than sideloading… as those things happen, the mobile device will be completely embedded as the primary computing device in fact, not just in theory. As the N95 ads say, “it’s what the computer has become” and it’s true (but not of the N95, I’m afraid).

The “content driving sales of content” model: Amazon’s Kindle appears to seek its profits not on device sales, but on opening the market to ebook sales. Is this how they intend to compete with Google’s devaluing of books… by making books affordable through non-printing? Cutting out of the loop the paper, the printing, the ink, the distributor, the store? Making it palatable by including the cellular connection? (Worthy of note: O’Reilly Radar)

The “content driving sales of hardware” model: This appears to be Nokia’s: rolling the cost of the content into the hardware, and keeping the content free by owning it themselves and amortizing the cost over tens of millions of hardware units.

The “content driving sales of advertising” model: Google. The evolution of the tried-and-true broadcast television model. It certainly works for Google. Will we see the day when Google struggles to maintain its advertising value as broadcast networks have? Surely a company is incubating somewhere that will eventually grow to challenge Google’s dominance… then what?

The “hardware driving sales of hardware AND content” model: Although you might argue that people purchase iPods because they want to use iTunes Music Store for price and ease of use… I wouldn’t buy that argument. I would believe that after the hardware sale, the content is a huge follow-on market.

If Nokia is trying to emulate Apple’s model, why are they including all this free content? It erodes the follow-on possibilities. On the other hand, follow-on content sales for mobile devices have been anemic all along (ringtones, music, video, mapping, whatever). So… is Nokia taking for granted that follow-on sales are not that valuable for some reason on this platform? Or are they betting that by getting people to use the content, later on (say, in two years) they’ll be unwilling to give it up, and will pay for subscriptions, and that that will be worthwhile?

I’m not a believer in educating the market. You see, once people become accustomed to not paying for content (eg, television programming), it’s hard to get them to pay for that same delivery later on. What you CAN get people to pay for is previously free content in a more convenient delivery (think buying a song via iTunes for “only” $0.99 rather than hassling to load a CD that’s down in the basement).

What do these models all have in common? With the exception possibly of Apple’s hardware business*, everyone is trying to figure out how to harness desire for content as a driver for sales of whatever it is they sell. Or how to change what they sell in order to make it driveable by content desire.

Why does content desire matter so much? Content is what you experience when you use the device. It is what brings you back again and again to use the device — you want to talk to someone, you reach for the phone. You want to hear a song — you reach for the iPod. You want to watch a movie — you reach for the TV remote. Only now, you can just reach for the mobile phone to do any of those things. It’s the mobile-able content that matters most, because it’s wherever you are.

* You could make a decent case that Apple’s “hardware” sales are actually sales of experience: combined hardware and operating system. Consumers pay more for Apple’s products not because they are beautiful, although they are, but because they want the usable, beautiful, stable operating system and applications. Which are themselves content, in a way.