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Motorola Announces E1060 Phone With iTunes Support
amichalo writes "Topping today's earlier news that Nokia and MS are collaborating on digital music in a cell phone, Motorola announced the E1060, a cell phone available Q4 2005 that supports MPEG-4/WMV/WMA/MP3 formats. Interestingly, Motorola is not locking themselves into Apple's iTunes, but also support Real Player. Reuters has more."
Is it just me or has motorola really made a come back with their industrial design? This unit looks great!
Some initial questions:
- Is there any word on what the iTunes interface looks like?
- Do we know what kind of removable memory it has? (What is TransFlash??)
- Will it DRM the music files so you can't transfer them back over bluetooth (is it a one-way sync?)
- Is the Bluetooth 2.0?
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
Not quite sure how this would be an ipod killer. It only has 32mb of internal memory and supports up to 512mb of additional memory. I can't really see cellphone/mp3 player combo devices really taking off until they start to have storage capabilities similar to an ipod mini.
That being said, I'm not sure I see downloadable music on your cellphone EVER taking off because once you've got tons of storage (and tons of your music) why would you spend the time (or money) downloading more through your phone. Where I think a device like this could become popular is if service providers offered streaming radio. This seems much more possible now with 3g networks taking off.
I think when you're trying to keep prices up and keep sales volume up, yes it might be too much to ask. I agree though, it's harder and harder to find a decent mobile phone that works well as a phone, first and foremost. Often you have to buy some super-fancy decked out version just to get a decent phone, but pay a huge premium for 45 features you don't want or need. Well, here's your market opening... get out the soldering gun.
Or, alternatively, "Interestingly, Nokia has locked themselves into Microsoft's Windows Media Player and Motorola has not done so"
...or how about, "Interestingly, the device will support a wide number of formats"?
Really getting tired of slanted stories.
It's pretty big news that the Motorola device supports stuff other than WMP formats. Why? Because generally MS contracts for that sort of thing go as follows: "License WMP, get the technology really, really cheap, get lots of support from us, we'll practically write it all for you. Now, dump everything else, or the deal's off." Motorola told 'em to go screw.
Please help metamoderate.
The way to make money with music-enabled cell phones is this.
1) Make sure you can sync with your computer (e.g., iTunes)
2) Keep the airtime charge for download low (music biz to subsidize?)
3) Work with the radio stations so that when they play a new release they can also say, "And dial *1592 with your iTunes phone to buy and download this song now"
Instant gratification + low end user cost = profit
No one will buy it. No one is going to buy the Nokia/Microsoft thing either. Just like no one bought the Nokia N-Gage. People don't want this sort of thing.
The thing to remember about "convergence" devices is they only make sense if you can perform both functions without either interfering with the other. Let's say someone sells something that is both a video game system and a DVD player. This is a good idea. There is no interference, and the parts compliment the whole nicely; a DVD player needs some kind of MPEG decoder, a video game system needs some kind of optical drive, but the two never interfere-- you will never want to use your DVD player and video game system at the same time. Now let's say someone sells something that is both a video game system and a PVR. It will not sell. True, a hard drive and certain other features are desirable in both video games and PVRs. There is massive interference, though; you very much want to use both of these products at the same time. You want to be able to sit there and play GTA all night without worrying that you're missing Family Guy, because the Tivo will just pick it up. The engineer must thus either duplicate so much hardware that there is little or no benefit to the convergence, or just dictate "you can't use the pvr and video game features at once". (Your PC, of course, can act as both a PVR and a video game system without significant interference! But there you're trading functionality for convenience, ease of use, focus and cost. Someone could try to slap together a PC that plugs into a TV and say "look! it's a pvr and video game system!"... but they'll probably be as hard to use and charge as much as if you'd just bought a small PC.)
Now, let's think: What if someone tries to put an mp3 player in a phone? Even worse idea. The parts compliment each other poorly; you do not want or need the kind of playback quality on a phone that you need in an mp3 player, you do not want or need the kind of disk storage in a phone that you need in an mp3 player (unless you have the ability to record and save phone calls or ambient noise, which is a kickass potential feature, but unlikely due to legality). Meanwhile, there's interference. You want to be able to pause your mp3 player to answer your phone without losing your place; you want to be able to run your mp3 player all night without your phone battery being dead in the morning. The two features subtly, but distinctly, struggle for the hardware. Maybe if Apple is building the thing they can reconcile the two. If Motrorola designs it... probably not so much.
Basically the only benefit here is that unlike with PVRs or video game systems, people have shown themselves ready and willing in large quantities to pay too much for mp3 players and phones. OK... wait, actually that's a pretty good benefit, since people have demonstrated they're willing to pay more for a "luxury" product with the iPod name, and if this is a high-margin product it will make decent profit even if very few people buy one. Um, I might have just seriously damaged my own argument. But, you get the idea.
Someday a PDA, a video game system, a phone, and an mp3 player may all converge in a single cost-effective, battery-efficient device. Until that day it is unlikely consumers will bite on a product that is more than one, but not all of these.
(Note: If you object to anything above, pretend I prepended it with "In my opinion...)
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I am the target audience. I bought an 1G iPod within 4 months of its release, I switch cell phones and providers every year to take advantage of the rebates, and my Mac is indispensible to me due to the synchronization of my calendar and contacts via iSync over Bluetooth to whatever cellphone is flavor-of-the-year.
And this phone will almost definitely become my next pick: my 1G iPod just died (not of battery issues -- I replaced that with a Newer Tech high capacity unit a while ago), my phone contract only has a few months left on it, and this advice would therefore let me slim down my pockets by cutting a theoretical iPod Shuffle out of the loop.
With so many phones on the market -- just browse through the US, GSM Nokia lineup sometime if you want to make your head spin -- there needs to be differentiation. All phones are reasonably small, and smaller yet is not worth $400 to me. All phones that I'd consider use Bluetooth and furthermore have adequate to excellent RF reception for all the neo-Luddites out there clamoring for "just a phone. sheesh". iTunes syncing is just the ticket for those like me on the fence.