Earlier this year Nokia, launched its Comes with Music program in Britain and then added other European nations to the list of active locations. The service provides buyers of qualifying Nokia mobiles access to a full year of unlimited music downloads that they can keep forever. The service sounds good and to many the big problem was that Nokia lacked a compelling mobile phone to bundle with the program.

Nokia had previously said that the Comes with Music program would be coming to America in 2009. Forbes is reporting today that the Comes with Music service will now be delayed until 2010 for Americans. Forbes reports that even in Europe the reception for Comes with Music has been lukewarm. Nokia has had no real success with the service in developed nations, but it has reportedly seen moderate success in developing countries.

Forbes quotes analyst Mark Mulligan from Forrester Research as saying, "Comes With Music has been below expectations in developed markets, though Nokia is having more success in emerging markets. In Western Europe and specifically Great Britain, Nokia has been hindered by not having a strong operator route to market."

According to Mulligan, the problem Nokia has had gathering operators to distribute its Comes with Music handsets is that it hasn't offered enough value to the operators. Many of the operators that Nokia is trying to woo have already spent significant sums creating their own music stores and they want a larger portion of the profits to offer the handsets.

The delay in the U.S. launch of the service can’t be considered a good thing for Nokia, but it is likely trying to wait to unveil the service when it has a compelling handset to offer alongside it. Perhaps Nokia is waiting until the N900 Maemo-powered handset comes to the U.S. and will launch Comes with Music at the same time.