The big winner in Led Zeppelin’s announcement that the band’s songs will be available digitally is Verizon.

The phone giant will get ringtone and similar mobile rights first. On Nov. 13, Verizon will get full digital rights to classic songs like "Stairway to Heaven" and "Money", along with iTunes.

It’s still hard to find a kid who listens to songs on their mobile phone (my son does, but he’s a self-proclaimed geek).

Verizon is quietly building for the future, much as Microsoft takes initial losses against rivals and survives by virtue of its heft to attack again.

Verizon is a triple threat: it sells mobile phones; it sells Internet; and its TV service is expanding into millions of homes. Make that a quadruple threat: it has a mobile TV, service, too.

There are a lot more cellphones in the world than iPods. Led Zeppelin is just the beginning of Verizon’s plans.

See Also

• Led Zeppelin to Make Its Songs Available Digitally
• Mobile Entertainment Summit

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On Oct. 22, hundreds of wireless developers  will converge for a preview of Navteq’s annual LBS Challenge, a kind of American Idol competition for creators of location-based services.

Last year, the creator of digital mapping and navigational software lauded obscure companies like Senda, a fleet management solution; SharpMind, which provides "location-relevant" information for travellers; and TikGames, which engages gamers in a worldwide search for "stolen artifacts."

If GPS on cellphones takes off, those companies may not be obscure much longer. Which explains why Nokia announced today it was willing to pay an astonishing $8.1 billion for Navteq.

For as long as I’ve been running mobile conferences, people have been predicting that GPS will be huge. You know: you’re driving by Starbucks and you get an ad for coffee mysteriously appearing on your phone. Kind of like the "order pizzas over the Internet" of yesteryear.

The technology has been modestly successful in Europe and Asia, but a complete dud thus far in the U.S. — except for some enterprising car rental companies that hawk GPS-enabled Nextel phones.

GPS phones and services are awaiting the kind of promotional muscle that finally turned Bluetooth headsets from geeky oddities to emblems of hip.

Nokia clearly believes the tide is finally about to turn for location-based mobile applications. If so, its $8.1 billion acquisition of Navteq will someday look — well, not exactly cheap, but at least better than Nokia’s stock drop today might suggest.

See Also

• Nokia Buys Software Maker for $8.1 Billion

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