Another titanic struggle is in the making -- this time in the digital convergence of music and the cell phone.

While we all wait for Apple's mobile phone announcement, the established mobile phone companies are staking out their ground in the mobile music market.

We already know about Verizon Wireless and V Cast (a service provider goes mobile music) and now we have Nokia (a cell phone set manufacturer) countering with its purchase of Loudeye, which has a digital music catalogue of 1.5 million tracks.

(The price you ask? $60 million.)

The deal will give Nokia content it can offer customers with music-enabled mobile phones. "People should be able to access all the music they want, anywhere, anytime and at a reasonable cost," Nokia EVP Anssi Vanjoki said, according to the BBC.

Here's some more verbiage from the "official press release":

"Music is a key experience for Nokia and Nokia Nseries multimedia computers and we want to be able to offer the best fully integrated mobile music experience to our customers. Loudeye brings a number of key assets to Nokia, including a great team of people, a substantial content catalogue and a robust service platform that will help us to achieve this objective," said Vanjoki. "People should be able to access all the music they want, anywhere, anytime and at a reasonable cost. With this acquisition, we aim to deliver that vision and a comprehensive music experience to Nokia device owners during 2007."

Love that "vision" thing ...