Monday, February 13, 2006

Motorola to launch Windows Media phones alongside their iTunes phones

Motorola has today announced that starting this summer they will sell mobile handsets carrying Windows Media which will enable mobile phone operators to offer their own digital music services to rival Apple's iTunes.

Motorola is both hedging their bets by selling the Rokr and Slvr as iTunes devices alongside Microsoft Media devices as well as responding to mobile operator demands for the Microsoft phones which allow them to offer their own services to rival iTunes.

Nokia has already agreed to launch Microsoft Media devices. And both Nokia and Motorola state that the benefit of Microsoft music phones is that users will be able to download songs directly to their mobile phones from operator music services as well as downloading them from their PC.

The iTunes service only lets you download to your PC - then you have to put the songs on your phone. Mind you looking at Google desktop technology it may be that one day it will not matter where you archive your music - Google technology will make it available to any device that runs Google desktop.

And if all this techno talk has confused the heck out of you - then stick with iTunes and an iPod - it's all much easier. You'll have to wait for the Apple iPod phone to really complete the picture - but it may be worth it for ease of use.

I still find operator services full of promise but woefully lacking in ease of use and seamless integration. That's why the Blackberry still owns the mobile email market and it may well prove why Apple can hold onto the digital (mobile) music market for a lot longer than anyone expects.

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