iTunes on Motorola Phones

[AmigoMac]

Pretty primitive but works...

From what I understand, Ringtones ARE a huge and gigantic market.
Something like $1.5 billion this year projected (Maybe next year?).

I read a story about some software that made ringtones out of normal MP3s and put them on your phone, and naturally they were sued.

People seem to love to spend money on a song for their phone.

Imagine, if you will, instead of going to your carrier's ring-ring page, you just boot up iTunes on your phone and download your songs straight there.

You could have all the AAC rings you want!


... Probably unlikely...
No doubt the Cingulars and Verizons of the world wouldn't want someone else cutting into their $2-a-download stuff for 99¢.

And probably the RIAA would want to start its own Mp3-ring store.


Oh well, it was fun while it laster.

I have a Nokia 3650, I just take one of my tunes, play it with Quicktime, select the part of the song I want, export it as a .wav file, send it to my phone via bluetooth, save it, go to settings and voilá! my ringtone is the first 15 seconds of Monsters Inc.'s soundtrack ... nice eh?

 

[Chip NoVaMac]

Apple had no choice but to do this. They know this is the next step.
People don't carry video players in their pockets, but they do carry
phones. Sony-Ericsson will probably announce a Similar thing that
works with the Sony-music service. This is Apple just trying to stay
ahead in the game.

besides, Ipods already sync with Addressbook and ical. it's only logical
that the future ipods will have phone capabilities.

www.iphone.org still links to the Apple website!

Can't believe with as many cell phone companies out there that Apple will do their own phone. The shame of it is that us Sprint users will probably do without yet again.

 

[sinisterdesign]

just when we thought we were rid of them...

so Moto is back in our picture, huh? i think this whole deal came out of Steve & Moto arguing about the G3 chips. "what the hell are we supposed to do w/ all of these chips we produced for you??!?" "i don't know and i don't care. stick them in your phones for all i care."

ok, maybe not.

interesting partnership, though. in a roundabout way, it does seem like it could cut into iPod sales. i mean, i could get 4GB of music for the gym on a mini or i could get 512MB of music, a phone and a camera in the same size/weight.

i'm not a big fan of the all-in-one phones yet. they do a bunch of stuff OK, but it's still not going to replace my PDA, iPod or digicam. [tech envy] although i have to admit, that Moto V3 Razor is s l i c k .[/tech envy]

 

[mgescuro]

Well, the Music Store eeks out a tiny profit every quarter now. I guess with a couple million songs per week sold, it is able to sustain itself. BUt if you're only selling 100,000 or so songs per week, there's no way to breakeven. That's why Roxio is going to run into some trouble.

As for APple... iPods are high margin devices and they sell 800,000 a quarter or about 2.5 million a year or more!

A phone with the capability of syncing to iTUnes on a Mac or PC will complement the iPods. You don't expect to have a hard drive based phone. That's just silly. However, it's not unreasonable to have an SD-based phone. ANd with SD's running to the 1GB range now... 250 songs on your phone doesn't sound all that bad. ANd even using a 512 MG SD card, 125 songs isn't all that bad either.

iPods do what they do best... they play music. Some people ahve phones permanently attached to their hip. SO why not take some of your music with you?

And who knows... with mobile iTUnes, it's not totally out of the realm of reason that Apple release a PocketPC or PalmOS v5/6 version. I mean, MediaPlayer has a version and so does real. QuickTIme already has mobile standards implemented. It's just that a viable product isn't out yet.

i didn't think of this earlier. i was under the impression that Apple's previous plan for the music store was as a tool for encouraging iPod sales. now it seems like they're letting it stand more on its own. i was thinking previously that it would be great if apple made a PDA version of iTunes, but i thought they wouldn't as it would probably have a negative impact on iPod sales. now this just confuses me.

 

[Misplaced Mage]

Can't believe with as many cell phone companies out there that Apple will do their own phone. The shame of it is that us Sprint users will probably do without yet again.

I can see Apple co-branding a phone built by someone else, but not build their own phone. There are a huge number of international, federal, industry, and carrier regulations that cell phones have to conform to, and the system interoperability testing is hideously complex (it makes 802.11 look like a walk in the park). Apple would basically have to hire away a substantial chunk of the RF and test engineers presently working for the current cell phone manufacturers to get the necessary experience up front, and build a substantial new testing infrastructure before it could even begin to consider building its own phone from scratch. Not impossible, true, but expensive and time consuming, especially to build just one product instead of an entire product line. How much easier would it be to let one of the existing companies handle the phone hardware design, test, and manufacturing, leaving Apple to concentrate on the handset design, user interface, and phone features -- convincing the various carriers to support the more advanced ones (like a music store) that would need back end support to function?

 

[SiliconAddict]

If there is an ounce of justice in the universe Apple will develop this software and then delay it for a few months while Jobs BS's Moto telling them its almost done its almost done.

 

[sinisterdesign]

If there is an ounce of justice in the universe Apple will develop this software and then delay it for a few months while Jobs BS's Moto telling them its almost done its almost done.

nice

Apple programmer to Moto: "where's the iTunes software? uh...yeah, we're just making it (what should i tell him, guys?) FASTER! yeah, we're just over here making it faster. yup. we'll get it to you soon, just keep marketing it to the public..."

 

[Lanbrown]

No my friend. On the contrary this step brings us even closer to the the possibility of an Apple Phone. This means Apple has squeezed the Quicktime frameworks down to a size that mobile phones can handle.

This is surely a feature of Quicktime 7. We'll know more soon enough but this is very encouraging news. This portends the potential for set top boxes with iTunes support or PDAs. This is step one in what is going to be hopefully an avalance of iTunes licensees.

What do you mean squeezed it down? Have you seen some of the processors that are available just for the mobile phone market? They are at over 200MHz, can support up to 256MB of DDR RAM, MMC/SD cards will soon be at 4GB. Storage and processing are no longer limitations. The next generation chips will be available later this year and provide 3D acceleration.

The only bad news of this whole announcement is that it is with Motorola. They should have teamed up with somebody a little bigger, a deal with Symbian and Nokia would have been the ticket. Now you are talking market penetration. Motorola has lagged behind in the mobile phone market for quite some time. Ever since the digital era they have been behind the times.

 

[Lanbrown]

#1 only by sales, not really in any other sense, but if this really takes of probably most phones will get it sooner or later, as well as other gadgets.

And Motorola is #1 in what? It took them how much longer then everyone else to get a CDMA phone out? All because they wanted to do their own chipset and the first version was such a lousy product, no major carrier sold it. It's taken them how long to get a camera phone out? They were part of Symbian but sold their stake and they never sold a major phone with Symbian on it. Not too long ago, Motorola was #1 in terms of DOA within the first thirty days. Even companies that just got into mobile phone manufacturing in were producing better quality products. At onetime a Motorola was a quality phone.

 

[Lanbrown]

Mr. Jobs, please repeat after me: CDMA

I personally want to see these phones on networks other than GSM. Apple, get these to the CDMA market!

The CDMA market is small in regards to GSM. GSM is around 1 billion users worldwide; CDMA is less than 200,000. In the US, GSM/TDMA is around 50% and CDMA has the other 50%.

 

[ClimbingTheLog]

Please repeat after me... GSM! Sprint and Verizon won't move on though, since they have spent so much money on their current PCS networks.

Move on to what? GSM is tdma/fdma based. CDMA uses spread-spectrum technology and supports higher data rates and more dense bandwidth usage. 3G rollouts are almost always built on the CDMA 2000 standard. GSM is easier to eavesdrop on and uses higher power. It also works very poorly in hilly terrain.

In Europe, at least GSM has swappable SIM cards, but the US hegemony has seen to it that it's hard to do here if you can do it at all.

Most new buildouts use CDMA. What do you know about GSM that we don't?

 

[Lanbrown]

Move on to what? GSM is tdma/fdma based. CDMA uses spread-spectrum technology and supports higher data rates and more dense bandwidth usage. 3G rollouts are almost always built on the CDMA 2000 standard. GSM is easier to eavesdrop on and uses higher power. It also works very poorly in hilly terrain.

In Europe, at least GSM has swappable SIM cards, but the US hegemony has seen to it that it's hard to do here if you can do it at all.

Most new buildouts use CDMA. What do you know about GSM that we don't?

Higher power is easily disputed; most phones; GSM and CDMA both are at the same transmission level. I can bring up the CDMA phone that Motorola tried to sell, it transmitted at the same power level as the handheld analog ones.

I can move my SIM card to another phone. It’s the phones that are locked, not the card. I just don’t buy phones from the provider, no big deal.

3G GSM is called UMTS, which is CDMA. The CDMA providers in the US decided not to adopt what the GSM providers were going to use and continue to go their own way. This only means it costs them more money to buy equipment. Economies of scale are in favor of GSM. Even a 3G GSM build out uses GSM for the phone portion.

 

[dontmatter]

I think we could be looking at a more integrated offering when we consider what else can be used on a phone.

Using mobile technology like Musikube's it is possible to both recognise a song from a 3 second or so 'snapshot' or recognise it from a bar code printed on an ad, concert ticket etc.

Now if this is then integrated into the ITMS then someone with a mobile could hear music (for example in a bar), get the name, buy the track from ITMS onto their phone and then store it back into their Mac / PC next time they synched, all within a matter of seconds. Maybe there is a revenue sharing arrangement between Motorola and Apple for songs purchased this way.

Secondly, my understanding (please correct if I'm wrong) is that sales of ringtones is currently higher than sales on singles. This would enable Apple & Motorola to get into that market.

On it's own the technology seems limited (unless phones start getting compact drives like the iPod Mini) as most people buy phones to make calls, send messages. High end phone users (where the phones have more memory) are probably also more likely to want a iPod as they are early technology adopters. Start thinking about new ways of behaving from integrated technology and then a whole new market becomes available which pushes sales to both ITMS and potentially Motorola.

Of course, just adding ability to play tunes bought on ITMS increases it's penetration. People buying tracks using a mobile device will want to use it immediately so giving a phone the capability to play these tracks enables ITMS to be used from a phone, giving the opportunity to get much better market penetration (incidently it is unlikely a store which gives listening access for a subscription will work in the mobile field where data is charged per unit rather than a fixed-per-month cost like broadband)

This all becomes possible because only iTunes (ignoring the Real thing) can handle tunes bought on ITMS and that leads the market - people will want to buy one copy which can be used on all devices, that the publishers are willing to sell electronically (because the rights management is good). It helps Apple establish the standard in purchased music which then benefits Motorola sales.

It could be a very smart alliance.

Andrew

Nice post! I approve.

And the listening and telling you what it is feature is incredible. it's the one thing that would make me get a more than cell phone. How many times do you hear something and want to know what it is, and maybe get it? ALL the time for me. a one button tag to say, hey, like this song, on a playlist of all songs you heard through the day would be awesome. I'd even use it for itunes, so I could hit F5, say, when listening to music, to say that I want to put this song in a playlist, without having to actually go into itunes and add the song to the playlist. Is there a name you could give of software using this music recognition feature, until it's in an itms phone?

 

[dontmatter]

so Moto is back in our picture, huh? i think this whole deal came out of Steve & Moto arguing about the G3 chips. "what the hell are we supposed to do w/ all of these chips we produced for you??!?" "i don't know and i don't care. stick them in your phones for all i care."

ok, maybe not.

interesting partnership, though. in a roundabout way, it does seem like it could cut into iPod sales. i mean, i could get 4GB of music for the gym on a mini or i could get 512MB of music, a phone and a camera in the same size/weight.

i'm not a big fan of the all-in-one phones yet. they do a bunch of stuff OK, but it's still not going to replace my PDA, iPod or digicam. [tech envy] although i have to admit, that Moto V3 Razor is s l i c k .[/tech envy]

I dunno, I'm not picturing it really competing. The ipod mini didn't reduce ipod sales, did it? It's more likely that people looking for a music player will buy a music player, and people looking for a full featured cell phone will buy this, love the music feature, and want a bigger one. Meanwhile, they'll have bought itms songs for the cell, and have itunes for the cell, so they won't even look at dell's or rio's.

Good move, I say.

 

[fatbarstard]

This is very good news

My Kyocera 7135 sucks... but wonder whether this groovy new phone will be available in international markets where iTMS isn't... like where I live....

 

[AmigoMac]

Higher power is easily disputed; most phones; GSM and CDMA both are at the same transmission level. I can bring up the CDMA phone that Motorola tried to sell, it transmitted at the same power level as the handheld analog ones.

I can move my SIM card to another phone. It’s the phones that are locked, not the card. I just don’t buy phones from the provider, no big deal.

3G GSM is called UMTS, which is CDMA. The CDMA providers in the US decided not to adopt what the GSM providers were going to use and continue to go their own way. This only means it costs them more money to buy equipment. Economies of scale are in favor of GSM. Even a 3G GSM build out uses GSM for the phone portion.

Analog phones have more SAR value than digital phones, you may move SIM cards between GSM phones, both SIM cards & Phones can be blocked by software, pretty easy for providers, USA CDMA & GSM Phones are not compatible, for those who wonder about this , 3G GSM doesn't exist at all, UMTS is the third generation of mobile communications , GSM is the second one... UMTS is based on WCDMA, pretty similar to CDMA, yes, it's based on it, theoretically, but still a huge difference in signal sampling, data rates & channels spreading, 3G CDMA is the US version of UMTS, 3G CDMA does exist and the difference between those systems is the motivation to the 4th generation of mobile communications, already on the way, big companies are working on standards, this way they could use roaming everywhere, that's the big failure of UMTS, because it was supposed to be
"Universal mobile telecommunication system" but hopefully 4G will be ...

I'm not sure what you mean about that "3G GSM" phones use a portion of GSM, I hope you meant, that it is necessary to include both systems into one phone because you may want to change your platform on the way, what if you have your phone on UMTS mode and receive a call on your GSM side? it requires a lot of work, between antenna, filters, decoders and channel detectors to build this... UMTS works from 1.9 GHz to 2.1 GHz
GSM bands are different... 850/1900 USA 900/1800 Europe

 

[Stella]

<sarcasm>
If apple do make a cellphone or co-brand you can guarentee it'll be CDMA, so perfect for the usa market..

There is no way they'll make a GSM phone.. despite GSM being vastly more popular world-wide.. they'll have next to no american customers.

Hell with freeze over first before Apple cater specifically for the majority of the planet.
</sarcasm>

 

[ClimbingTheLog]

Higher power is easily disputed

OK, so do so. CDMA samples power levels every couple milliseconds and adjusts accordingly.

I can bring up the CDMA phone that Motorola tried to sell, it transmitted at the same power level as the handheld analog ones.

You could, but then somebody would just point out that one bad implementation doesn't mean a standard is bad.

I can move my SIM card to another phone. It’s the phones that are locked, not the card.

Umm, no, most SIM cards are locked. T-Mobile will reportedly unlock your SIM card after 4 or 6 months if you get to a knowledgable rep. and they have a 'good' policy.

I just don’t buy phones from the provider, no big deal.

Calling plans have the cost of a phone built into them, that's the way US providers work. Yeah, it sucks, but c'est le vie. For some people money is an object.

3G GSM is called UMTS, which is CDMA

So, the GSM providers chose CDMA - that's telling, isn't it?

This only means it costs them more money to buy equipment.

Are you accounting for the added users per cell? Even GSM backers admit that CDMA is typically less expensive per user to deploy.

Economies of scale are in favor of GSM.

Are you running Windows on a Dell?

Even a 3G GSM build out uses GSM for the phone portion.

Did you expect them to ditch compatibility with their installed base? And, I can still intercept a GSM call because it uses FDMA for channel allocation.

 

[Pablo]

The CDMA market is small in regards to GSM. GSM is around 1 billion users worldwide; CDMA is less than 200,000. In the US, GSM/TDMA is around 50% and CDMA has the other 50%.

Verizon (one of the CDMA carriers) probably has 200,000 users in Houston alone. I'm not sure how many CDMA customers there are in the US (or worldwide), but as Verizon added 1.5 million users in the 2nd quarter of this year, the numbers are much, much higher than you state.

Granted, it's still behind GSM as far as numbers, only because the US decided to let the market decide the standard rather than handing down an edict and subsidizing the networks.

 

[SandyL]

Umm, no, most SIM cards are locked.

Wrong. It's the handsets which are locked.

 

[jerk]

So, the GSM providers chose CDMA - that's telling, isn't it?

As stated above, the non US 3G standard is NOT the US (qualcomm) CDMA cell phone system thing, both are CDMA in it's real sense: Code Division Multiple Access, a spread spectrum modulation, but they are not the same. The non US 3G standard is called UMTS, and they call the modulation W-CDMA to make it sound a little better than CDMA (which it probably is).

So saying that the US went it's own way is still valid, and also that the US may have to pay a little more to go their own way again. US even tried to make Iraq CDMA to get a wider spread outside the US.

 

[weev]

I'm very surprised Nokia didn't partner... since they are by far number 1.

What is the logic here? Apple is not number 1 either, you must mean that Nokia should partner with M$oft.

Apple and Motorola have been in business together before, its a rekindling of a recent alliance.

And a benefit to both, Apple moves into phones in a small way, and motorola into portable music players.

Bring it on.

 

[Stella]

What is the logic here? Apple is not number 1 either, you must mean that Nokia should partner with M$oft.

Apple and Motorola have been in business together before, its a rekindling of a recent alliance.

And a benefit to both, Apple moves into phones in a small way, and motorola into portable music players.

Bring it on.

LOL..
Just because Apple isn't number means they shouldn't partner with the number 1 in cellphones...

To be honest I prefer SonyEricsson over Nokia...

Motorola - over on think secret they suggest PBs may be refreshed to include Motorola G4 Extended processors which are as fast as 2Ghz..!!


@Jerk
> US even tried to make Iraq CDMA to get a wider spread outside the US.
Yep.. that was pretty stupid...
us Sentors didn't want European countries to benefit from Iraq contracts (just because they excercised their *democratic* rights and voted against an invasion of Iraq), instead the us prefered Iraq to be incompatible with its neighbours.. pretty f?cked up if you ask me..

 

[Lanbrown]

Analog phones have more SAR value than digital phones, you may move SIM cards between GSM phones, both SIM cards & Phones can be blocked by software, pretty easy for providers, USA CDMA & GSM Phones are not compatible, for those who wonder about this , 3G GSM doesn't exist at all, UMTS is the third generation of mobile communications , GSM is the second one... UMTS is based on WCDMA, pretty similar to CDMA, yes, it's based on it, theoretically, but still a huge difference in signal sampling, data rates & channels spreading, 3G CDMA is the US version of UMTS, 3G CDMA does exist and the difference between those systems is the motivation to the 4th generation of mobile communications, already on the way, big companies are working on standards, this way they could use roaming everywhere, that's the big failure of UMTS, because it was supposed to be
"Universal mobile telecommunication system" but hopefully 4G will be ...

I'm not sure what you mean about that "3G GSM" phones use a portion of GSM, I hope you meant, that it is necessary to include both systems into one phone because you may want to change your platform on the way, what if you have your phone on UMTS mode and receive a call on your GSM side? it requires a lot of work, between antenna, filters, decoders and channel detectors to build this... UMTS works from 1.9 GHz to 2.1 GHz
GSM bands are different... 850/1900 USA 900/1800 Europe

I was referring to the 3G standard that the GSM providers are using; hence the 3G GSM compared to the 3G services that the CDMA carriers in the US are using.

The CDMA carriers could have used UMTS but they chose not to. There is a migration path to UMTS but not from EV-D0 to UMTS, well, at least not an easy one. So it was a failure because Verizon and Sprint made it a failure.

If you have a 3G phone, the 3G is not the portion that is used to make the phone calls.

I know the bands are different. I have extensive background in mobile communications.

 

[Lanbrown]

Verizon (one of the CDMA carriers) probably has 200,000 users in Houston alone. I'm not sure how many CDMA customers there are in the US (or worldwide), but as Verizon added 1.5 million users in the 2nd quarter of this year, the numbers are much, much higher than you state.

Granted, it's still behind GSM as far as numbers, only because the US decided to let the market decide the standard rather than handing down an edict and subsidizing the networks.

Sorry less than 200 million, a far cry from 1 billion for GSM. CDMA only got a foothold as TDMA was tested by many carriers and they just didn't like it. So used it, others did not. The ones that didn’t like it went with CDMA, as it was much more readily available as compared to GSM equipment in the cellular frequencies.