Nokia, the handset manufacturer, has announced that it will start pre-installing a raft of Microsoft internet applications on its phones from early next year as a way of increasing revenue from web services.

From January, owners of Series 40 handsets will find Windows Live Hotmail, Messenger, Live Contacts and Live Spaces installed on their phones, while the applications will be available for five phone models this week.

The deal, which applies in 11 countries including Britain, France, Germany and Spain, demonstrates the extent to which Nokia is trying to muscle in on the growth of internet-based mobile services such as web browsing and music downloads, which have traditionally been dominated by the networks.

Initially, however, only those phones purchased at retail price – without network subsidies – will offer the programs.

Nokia is seeking approval to offer the same package on phones subsidsed by the networks, which tightly regulate the applications that can be downloaded in order to maximise their own revenues, a spokesman for the company said.

A range of Microsoft products have been used in Nokia phones in the past, including Windows Media DRM 10, which provides copy protection for music files, but this will be the first time that the Nokia's own operating system will be able to synchronise with some of Microsoft's most widely-used consumer products.

The deal will mean, for instance, that contacts from a Nokia phone can be synchronised with those on Windows Live, Microsoft's internet platform, and that pictures taken on phones can be uploaded to the internet more easily.

Nokia has for some time been providing software designed to facilitate mobile internet access and, in turn, enable the company to share more readily in the advertising revenue associated with such services.

It added Microsoft's copy protection program in 2005, and earlier this month announced that its new phones would soon come installed with PlayReady, another Microsoft product, which provides a platform for delivering digital content such as music, video, and images.

"These aren't just applications that will sit in the background of your phone," Steven Knuff, a Nokia spokesman, said. "They will integrate and intertwine fully with your phone. This is about converging the fixed and mobile internet so that users just think of there being one internet, which they access from a single platform."

Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president for Online Services at Microsoft, said: "The availability of Windows Live services on Nokia devices demonstrates our commitment to extending people's online lives from the PC to the device."

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