Fewer than 2 percent of mobile users in the United States and western Europe used their phone to download music in the first quarter, showing the uphill task facing Apple iTunes challengers like Nokia. Instead, the vast majority loaded the tracks on to their handset from music they already had on a computer.

Apple iTunes has a virtual monopoly of the legal market for digital music, although the company has new rivals. Nokia does not say how many users it has for Comes With Music, which comes free with certain handsets and allows users to download millions of tunes to their phones or PC for a year and keep them afterwards.

Stockholm-based Spotify has more than 7 million users. It has a free service for listeners who accept advertising, and paid-for services without ads.

Rhapsody America was one of the first services to offer unlimited music packages, in 2007, in an attempt to rival iTunes.

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