Reports earlier this week suggested that Comes With Music's US launch has been delayed from this year until 2010, seemingly based on comments from a Nokia spokesperson there.

ME sat down with Nokia's global head of music Liz Schimel today at Nokia World, so we asked her. “We've never announced a specific launch date for the US,” she said. “We prefer to announce launches at the point when they're quite imminent. We pick the moment when we have all the optimised conditions, but it's not a question of a delay.”

In fact, Nokia's EVP of entertainment and communities Tero Ojanpera did say “We are looking at the US also in 2009” during a keynote interview at MidemNet this year – hence talk of a delay now. However, “looking at” is not the same as “launching in”, as Nokia will undoubtedly point out.

What's not in doubt is that the company is very focused on emerging markets for Comes With Music right now, including India – Schimel is fresh back from a trip there to launch Nokia's Music Store.

“It's not just a launch: it's the birth of the digital music business in India,” says Schimel. “We have over three million tracks in our store, and the next competitor has just 100,000. India has a huge music scene but hasn't really had a vibrant digital market.”

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The launch of the music store is Nokia's first step in India, too. “We'll bring Comes With Music there in the next few months,” says Schimel. “It's a market where people are reluctant to pay a lot of money for music, but are willing to invest significantly to get a great handset.”

Schimel says Nokia will also capitalise on its Indian launch by also rolling out “mini-stores” elsewhere in the world, offering Indian music.

With much talk about “social location” as a concept at the Nokia World this week, how is that making its way – if at all – into Nokia's music services? Something's brewing on this score, but Schimel is cautious of giving too much away.

“We have a rich recommendation engine now, and you will see us rolling out more social features,” she says. “Playlist-sharing for example. We have a roadmap of features coming in, but we tend to not pre-announce too much. There's some very cool music stuff coming...”

Schimel says Nokia is also working more closely with artists, including marketing campaigns, events and even applications – at Nokia World the company was showing off an app developed for Noisettes, for example. iPhone is some way ahead on this, though, for now.

However, Schimel says Comes With Music is encouraging some more traditional ways of listening to music too.

“The album is back as an artform!” she says. “We're seeing a very large percentage of our customers download and consume the whole album. And we're seeing broader exploration across more genres, and delving deep into the catalogue.”