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• •
102Wireless Telephone, the Internet and Home Computer
Links
• • 18th
week 2005 / Motorola Corp. is developing mobile phones with
a novel capability: They can link a home computer, stereo
and car sound system into a seamless, commercial-free music
zone.
• • The company plans to launch a service,
dubbed iRadio, that allows the new phones to download songs
and radio programming from an Internet- connected computer
each day, then beam them to car stereos or home
entertainment centers.
• • The phones are not expected to reach
the market until later this year, with the iRadio service
due in December, said David E. Ulmer, a top marketing
executive at Motorola. The company needs one or more mobile
phone companies to sign on, and none have publicly lent
support.
• • The iRadio initiative reflects the
intense interest that phone manufacturers, music companies
and mobile network operators have in new music services for
cellphones. Their appetites whetted by the
multibillion-dollar global market for ring tones, they are
eager to sink their teeth into song downloads, online
jukeboxes and music videos -- even though it's not clear
what, if anything, customers will
buy.
• • Motorola's approach also is a harbinger
of an era to come, in which all sorts of digital devices
automatically will connect and share with one another
whenever they come into range. People's mobile devices will
routinely link to their home networks and their cars using
technologies such as Bluetooth, a standard for short-range
wireless communications.
• • One key to winning carriers' support,
analysts say, is giving them a financial incentive to offer
the service. The iRadio service would do that by having
carriers collect and keep the bulk of the monthly service
fee, which Ulmer said would probably be $5 to
$7.
• • Motorola previously announced a new
phone that would play songs purchased from Apple Computer
Inc.'s market-leading iTunes Music Store. But no carriers
are offering the phone because they would receive no share
of the store's sales, music industry sources
say.
• • Although the Swiss Army Knife approach
has not worked well for many portable devices, the cellphone
is so indispensable to most users that they may want to
expand its functions and leave their other gear at
home.
• • "The cellphone as a device for making
more than just phone calls, that's a winning proposition,"
said Adam Klein, executive vice president for strategy and
business development at EMI Music. "That's an established,
accepted pattern among consumers
already."
• • The increasing capacity of wireless
networks and advancing mobile-phone technology have led
carriers to experiment with an assortment of music offerings
and other new services. And phone manufacturers have obliged
over the last year by introducing models with the powerful
chips and extra storage needed to hold and play sizable
quantities of music, images and
video.
• • Ulmer said one of the goals of iRadio
was to provide a bridge between online radio and people's
car stereos. The service will let customers load their
phones with prerecorded, commercial-free digital radio
stations. The phones will connect via Bluetooth to specially
equipped car stereos, enabling people to listen to the
stations stored on the phones as if they were coming in over
the air.
• • When they step out of their cars, they
can continue listening to the stations or MP3 files by
plugging headphones into their phone. They could also hit
the pause button, then resume playing through a
Bluetooth-equipped home stereo.
• • Analyst Ted Schadler of Forrester
Research was skeptical about music services on the
cellphone, arguing that the demand for ring tones was driven
more by a desire to personalize phones than to be
entertained by them. David Card, an analyst at Jupiter
Research, added that mobile music services would have a hard
time succeeding if they required a bulky phone, shortened
battery life or ate into the customer's
airtime.
• • By using the phone more as a storage
locker than a portable music player or Internet jukebox,
Ulmer said, iRadio should not drain the phone's battery or
gobble up airtime. The mobile network would be used only for
premium services that provided breaking news, weather,
traffic or sports information, he
said.
• • Still, iRadio would require users not
only to buy a new phone but also to install Bluetooth
adapters in their cars and homes to take full advantage of
the service.
• • Charles Golvin, another Forrester
analyst, said the market for services such as iRadio might
prove to be large because about a third of cellphone users
are focused on entertainment. Those users are likely to be
drawn to a service that offers something they cannot get
through their PC or at their home.
• • Said Golvin, "If there isn't that
urgency or exclusivity, those things aren't going to
fly."
///
ByLines:
Editors Note
More Articles
• Converging
News 182005 / TeleCom Buy Outs and Asset Seizure
Boom
Respectfully
Submitted
Josie
Cory
Publisher/Editor
TVI Magazine
TVI Magazine,
tviNews.net, YES90, Your Easy Searh, Associated Press,
Reuters, BBC, LA Times, NY Times, VRA's D-Diaries, Industry
Press Releases, They Said It and SmartSearch were used in
compiling and ascertaining this Yes90 news report.
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