Motorola chief says iTunes phones due this week
After much anticipation, Motorola on Thursday is expected to announce the first mobile handsets that will carry Apple's popular iTunes music software.
In the report, Motorola chief executive Ed Zander said that after selling more than a million of its new super-thin Razr phones with help from Cingular, he gave mobile phone chief Ron Garriques the green light on other ambitious design projects, like the Pebl.
The Pebl is described as a 'feminine counterpart to the masculine Razr,' which drew its inspiration from the glossy stones found on riverbanks. Company design chief Jim Wicks said future high-end Motorola phones will carry either the Razr or Pebl design signature. The iTunes phones would presumably fall under one or both of these categories.
The new iTunes phones that will launch this month will allow customers to play their existing iTunes songs, and possibly buy new ones. But a potential roadblock for Motorola and Apple may be the wireless operators like Sprint, who are interested in setting up the stores themselves. Both Zander and analysts agree that carriers will ultimately get the first shot at selling songs on phones.
Motorola executives also hint at a third design family, the Rockr, which it hopes will begin to deliver the company's vision of "seamless mobility." Zander claims that only Motorola has all the pieces of technology needed to turn phones into the center of our expanding digital lives. The Rockr, he says, might recognize songs being played in a club, let users download them to their phones and then send them home to their cable boxes and stereo.
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The Rockr, he says, might recognize songs being played in a club, let users download them to their phones and then send them home to their cable boxes and stereo.
[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
OMFG... That would be f*cking awesome. I just hope they are can pull this one off...
I may go to CeBit this Thursday or next Monday.
If I go Thuirsday I'll try and get some hi-res pics of the thing.
Then again, I think half the net will be clogged with pics of the thing so...
nevermind.
After much anticipation, Motorola on Thursday is expected to announce the first mobile handsets that will carry Apple's popular iTunes music software.
[...] But a potential roadblock for Motorola and Apple may be the wireless operators like Sprint, who are interested in setting up the stores themselves. Both Zander and analysts agree that carriers will ultimately get the first shot at selling songs on phones.
So sometime between 1-2 years from now and never is when we'll see these phones on Verizon Wireless.
OMFG... That would be f*cking awesome. I just hope they are can pull this one off...
It would be quite difficult. How can you tell the difference between two 5 minute "remix" versions of a song, for example?
Also, you would have to keep some kind of hash key in the phone for every song in existance, which would be a lot.
WiFi enabled phone + iTunes sending out tags info over WiFi point = every phone can look up the info automatically, contact server at home to tell iTunes installed there to buy it from the iTMS.
Voila.
If not full WiFi, then a local radio signal w/ approved transmitter base from Motorola that plugs in through USB or some such.
Again, voila.