Major Hangups Over the iPod Phone

chadwick writes "It seemed like a sure thing: the iPod mobile phone. What could be more irresistible than a device combining the digital-music prowess of Apple Computer (AAPL) with the wireless expertise of Motorola (MOT)? Motorola sent its buzz machinery into overdrive in January when it leaked word that the product would debut at a cellular-industry conference in New Orleans in mid-March. Well, hold the phone. At the New Orleans confab, a frustrated Edward Zander, Motorola's chief executive, stood before a roomful of analysts and reporters and said the handset's debut would have to wait. "

Comments

Pre announcements

[BWJones]

At the New Orleans confab, a frustrated Edward Zander, Motorola's chief executive, stood before a roomful of analysts and reporters and said the handset's debut would have to wait. "

Showing precisely why pre-announcement of products only leads to problems, frustrations, and customer dissatisfaction.

Only announce products when they are done and ready to ship and you avoid this sort of garbage. Everybody is speculating on just what the hold-up is. It could be that the phone is not ready or that the wireless carriers are trying to extract every last cent out of somebody else's (Apple and Motorola) hard earned work. But the point is that there is now a consumer expectation and they are complaining to Apple and Motorola saying "why can't you get your $#!t together and release the product?" when it may actually be the fault of Verizon, Cingular et. al. The problem of course is that on sales of the songs themselves, Apple's profit is next to nothing. So having other companies try and muscle in on very thin margins means 1) either somebody has to take it in the shorts or 2) we all lose. Of course if the record labels would allow more access to the music for Internet delivery, it would be treated as the commodity it really is and there would be more room for profits from higher volume, but that is another post.

Oh, and it would be nice if people who are submitting articles would actually summarize the story rather than posting verbatim what the writer of the referenced article says.

Re:Pre announcements

[tha_mink]

"Only announce products when they are done and ready to ship and you avoid this sort of garbage. Everybody is speculating on just what the hold-up is. It could be that the phone is not ready or that the wireless carriers are trying to extract every last cent out of somebody else's (Apple and Motorola) hard earned work. But the point is that there is now a consumer expectation and they are complaining to Apple and Motorola saying "why can't you get your $#!t together and release the product?" when it may actually be the fault of Verizon, Cingular et. al. The problem of course is that on sales of the songs themselves, Apple's profit is next to nothing. So having other companies try and muscle in on very thin margins means 1) either somebody has to take it in the shorts or 2) we all lose. Of course if the record labels would allow more access to the music for Internet delivery, it would be treated as the commodity it really is and there would be more room for profits from higher volume, but that is another post."

But then you forget how the market reacts. You pre-announce a product, or an idea, and when it makes sense and gets buzz, your stock goes up. But when you announce you need more time, nothing bad happens. (or at least you don't lose your previous gains) So, when you need capital to do such a thing, you pre-announce. Nobody gets hurt...you'll get your iPod phone soon enough, if of course, you can spend the dollars.

Re:Pre announcements

[BWJones]

Nobody gets hurt...

But it is of course dishonest to both your customers and shareholders. For companies that want to build quality relationships with their customers, this is bad policy. You've heard of vaporware? Yeah, that's what your customers begin to expect and why companies like Microsoft, HP (under Carly) and others have lost the respect of many of their customers. Concept products are one thing, in that they are designed to get a feeling for how your customer base would react to such a product, but there is no expectation of that concept being actually produced in its current form. Pre-announcing is simply dishonest.

Re:Pre announcements

[tomdoe]

Thanks for the brief summary/analysis. I thought the part about mods posting verbatim was particularly insightful.

Re:Pre announcements

[lowrydr310]

I thought the wireless companies make enough profit by passing on their fees and surcharges directly to the customer. Imagine buying something at Target and having them charge you an electricy surcharge, security surcharge, paper surcharge (to cover the cost of the paper your receipt was printed on), etc.

Ok, maybe it's not exactly the same, but wireless companies seem pretty greedy and I read an article somewhere that said they make a hefty chunk of change by passing telecom fees directly to the consumer. Even if my bill was the same amount that I pay now, I would feel more comfortable if they didn't itemize those fees and make it seem that the government requires them to directly bill the consumer.

Re:Pre announcements

[mp3phish]

" I thought the wireless companies make enough profit by passing on their fees and surcharges directly to the customer"

Actually, cellular companies make a hefty profit by reselling the phones. They only "lose" money on the free phones. All the "discounted" phones are still above their costs. They just jack them up significantly and then drop them back down to a reasonable level when you buy the 2yr contract.

Re:Pre announcements

[tomdoe]

Last I checked, apple pays 60c per song and resells them for 99c.

Actually, I believe the poster is just stating a bit of widely-reported information:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/07/your_99c_b elong/

At an Apple financial analyst conference on Wednesday CEO Steve Jobs admitted that Apple makes no revenue from the online download service, the iTunes Music Store, that he launched in April.

Re:Pre announcements

[soupdevil]

It's not "simply" dishonest -- it's dishonest in tricky and complex ways.

Re:Pre announcements

[BasilBrush]

You never "checked". Apple does not release information on their gross or net profits per song. There has been a credible analyst that puts it at 25c proft, and an analyst in TFA puts it at 4c. Truth is we really don't know.

Re:Pre announcements

[BWJones]

Last I checked, apple pays 60c per song and resells them for 99c. That is approximately a 40% margin.

Where did you check? Because the numbers I have (as a shareholder) reveal that margins are closer to 6%. Analysts such as Piper Jaffray estimate its anywhere from %5 to 10% and some analysts have suggested that Apple has actually lost some money in the first year on iTunes.

You obviously have no concept of margins in e-commerce. Otherwise you wouldn't be saying that.

My investment portfolio says otherwise.

Next time try to make your argument stick in real world scenerios......

What is it that we are talking about here? In case you did not know, the iTMS is a real world investment.

rather than make believe BS you want to spout off to try to look smart

I'll let the Ph.D. and my publications speak to that. Look, there is no need to be rude on this forum as there are many here that are trying to keep Slashdot an informative place to go. What exactly is it that you are trying to say?

Re:Pre announcements

[BasilBrush]

My word, you do come out wilth a lot of bullshit. All phones that come with a contract are subsidised, not just the free ones. The operators do not make any profit on any of them, quite the contrary. If you didn't know this already, again you'd heve learned it by reading TFA.

Re:Pre announcements

[rlds]

You pre-announce a product, or an idea, and when it makes sense and gets buzz, your stock goes up. But when you announce you need more time, nothing bad happens.

Well, it doesn't work that way in biotech and pharma products. Those stocks dive deep when an upcoming "miracle drug" hits a snag. Just ask Martha Stewart.

Re:Pre announcements

[thparker]

Last I checked, apple pays 60c per song and resells them for 99c. That is approximately a 40% margin.... You can hardly say iTMS is next to nothing in margin.

You were pretty harsh for someone who is so totally wrong. While the exact numbers are not available, it is believed that 60-65 cents is what goes to the record label. There are additional costs associated with the song publisher and the technology infrastructure that's required. So your claim of a 40% direct margin doesn't come close to including all direct costs, and completely ignores indirects.

It looks like you don't have any concept of margins at all, e-commerce or otherwise, the different types of margins that get calculated, or how margin differs from net profit. But hey, you did get to make a nasty crack about Apple iPod fanboys, right?

Apple claims the music store is a breakeven deal, and others estimate they make roughly 4 cents a song. That's a pretty trivial amount flowing through to Apple's bottom line. To put this into a "real world scenario" for you -- iTMS downloads are now estimated at well over 1,000,000 per day. Your ridiculously inaccurate numbers would mean that Apple is netting over $100 million a year from music downloads -- nearly double Apple's entire net profit in 2003 and more than 2/3 of their incredible 2004 results. I find that scenario, um, unlikely.

To make this a little simpler for you: Apple's goal is to make money and increase its stock price. They benefit from hugely successful and profitable products. Believe me, if the iTMS store was profitable, Apple would not keep it a secret and deceive us all with a fabricated story that they're just breaking even.

Re:Pre announcements

[cptgrudge]

Huh? What are you talking about? When I worked at RadioShack, the actual cost to the company for midrange phones is somewhere around 150 to 200 dollars. Sure, the cheap and discontinued phones are 50 bucks or less, but the new phones are not cheap. The regular phones become profitable to sell at those prices only when you get a contract, because the service provider gives a credit back to the RadioShack.

Even then, the margin is not that much, and we were pushed hard to add accessories onto the sale in order to increase that margin. That plastic holster you're getting for 15 bucks? The actual cost is 2 bucks. That car charger for 30 bucks? 10 bucks. It used to be different a decade ago, and margins were greater on the phone itself, but the market wasn't saturated with cell phones back then.

Re:Pre announcements

[Ikarius_rb]

Gee, it would be good if you actually read the article. The product works and is ready to go, in the time frame they projected. Motorola isn't at fault in the slightest here. The real problem is that the cell carriers are looking at this and going "Where's OUR profit in this?" Verizon and Cingular are trying to extort more money out of the deal, so they're stonewalling on selling the phone until apple/motorola cut them in for some new revenue streams. Not that this is new for Verizion. They want a way to charge for every new feature that goes into the phones...

Re:Pre announcements

[Desert Raven]

The operators do not make any profit on any of them, quite the contrary.

See what you get when you state absolutes...

There's no way there's only $100-$150 margin on units like the Handspring Treo 650 or the Audiovox XV6600, and that's usually the best discount you can get on those.

On the *very high end*, there is plenty of margin left after the discounts. And the very high end is often what businesess are buying, which accounts for a decent percentage of sales.

Not only that, existing customers who are upgrading often cannot get even half the discount that new customers get, especially on high-end units.

So, while a lot of the mobile companies' stock is loss-leader, they're still making some money on the sales of handsets.

Re:Pre announcements

[TinyManCan]

You do realize that those stats you linked to are the _quarterly_ reports. Note also that apple grew its cash holdings by _BILLIONS_ of dollars in the last year.

Not profit per se, but still.

Re:Pre announcements

[topham]

It is not uncommon for the cost, as seen by most employees to have no bearing on the actual cost to the company.

Often it is used to prevent sales people from selling below actual cost to the company.

As well, for cellular phones, etc there are often arangements for payments back to the company to offset their costs, often based on goals set for the company, not unlike the spiffs the employees get (or used to) for selling certain items.

Re:Pre announcements

[Autobahn]

While I mainly agree with you, 4 cents/song at 1m downloads per day is $40k per day, or $14.5 million per year. That's around 10% of profits - nothing to sneeze at. (My math may be wrong though.) Also, if Apple originally thought iTMS was going to be a loss leader, turning any profit at all is unexpected and nice.

Also it's to their benefit to make potential competitors think iTMS loses money, to prevent competition, so they very well might keep profitability a secret. It's not like Apple shareholders need encouragement these days.

Re:Pre announcements

[JWW]

I love how the wireless companies are concerned about their #$^#%!!@# ringtones. When I hear someones phone start playing a dorky little tune it just makes me want to go over, take it from them and stomp on it.

My cellphone is set to the most phone like ringtone I can find.

But everyone who likes your ringtones, see what it brought you, now through your love of ringtones, the cellular companies think all songs should cost $3. Nope, no cellphone mp3 player convergance here, move along....

Re:Pre announcements

[Ikarius_rb]

Gee, I think someone may have some anger issues....

Re:Pre announcements

[laird]

"Last I checked, apple pays 60c per song and resells them for 99c. That is approximately a 40% margin.... You can hardly say iTMS is next to nothing in margin. ...
You were pretty harsh for someone who is so totally wrong. "

To back up the analysis, let me provide some numbers.

If a track sells for 99 cents, the record company gets perhaps 70 cents (which then pays royalties to artist, composer, label, etc.). Of the remaining 29 cents, the credit card company charges perhaps 15 cents (depending on how well Apple negotiated them down from the 25 cents that's their starting position). So now you've got 14 cents left, which has to pay for implementing a large scale e-Commerce system that can sell music, plus the hardware and bandwidth costs, plus of course the cost to have the engineers build and run the system, the customer support representatives answer phone calls, the cost of marketing, etc.

Given how iTunes' sales volume has ramped up, I'd hope that iTMS is profitable, but it's a rough business, and for a company that can make high margins on hardware, it wouldn't make sense to spend a lot of money to enter a low-margin business. Buf if they can brek even selling music, and by doing so enable the iPod business to grow (and somehat lock anyone who bought music into buying iPods forever), that's a very smart move.

Yes, there are a few stores selling music slightly cheaper than iTMS, but they do so in somewhat misleading ways. For example, Walmart sells music as a loss leader to generate traffic into the rest of their store. That's also how they sell CD's cheaper than everyone else -- they are willing to sell one heavily promoted CD at a loss, but they place the music section as far from the front door as possible, and sell everyone who goes to the store to buy the music $100 worth of other stuff. And the company advertising 79 cent tracks only sells _some_ tracks for 79 cents -- their tracks range up to $1.49 (last time I looked) so their average prices was about the same as Apple's, and the usage rules were all over the place (e.g. you can burn some music that you buy to CD, other music you can't, etc.). Then there was a company selling music at "reverse auction" prices, where music started cheap and got more expensive the more popular it was, which is cool, but the reality is that they paid the same for their music as everyone else, and decided that they could take the loss in order to get some PR for being a cool place to buy music. Napster is at least interesting, since they sell someting completely different -- essentially they're not sellig music, but are selling subscription access to a library on demand for as long as you keep subscribing, but once you stop subscribing all of the music goes away. Since they're not really selling music that you own, their costs are lower (or at least different). Their problem, though, is that what people want to do is buy music and own it, not rent it. In particular, while in theory the "infinite jukebox in the sky" sounds great, and accountants certainly like the idea of a permanent revenue stream, but in reality teenagers hate the idea of committing to a permanent $15/month subscription fee forever.

Re:Pre announcements

[ePhil_One]

But it is of course dishonest to both your customers and shareholders.

But according to the article the problem isn't that the phone isn't ready, the problem is the carriers don't want to sell it unless they can charge $.99 each song you install. By announcing it, consumers can pressure the carriers to support the phone.

Of course, this sounds a bit odd, as carriers still sell phones that don't support all those wacky pictures and backgrounds, and being the only carrier to sell the iPod phone seems like a great draw to me. So Moto might be playing the blame game as a diversion to buy more time, though I can't imagine there's anything complex about taping a cell phone to an iPod beyond where do the buttons go and how long do the batteries last...

Re:Pre announcements

[mp3phish]

"Wednesday CEO Steve Jobs admitted that Apple makes no revenue from the online download service"

Then obviously jobs isn't a good CEO. Everyone knows that all incoming cash is revenue. Profit is a different story. They _MAY_ make no profit in iTMS but that has NOTHING to do with revenue.

When you talk about revenue streams, and its costs and benefits, reselling margin is a huge factor. The iTMS may be breaking even if you take into consideration R&D on iTunes and iTunes servers, cost of running the servers, and advertising costs. But you are missing the point. Apple spends more on advertising iTMS than _ANY_ other company in the mp3 player or music downloading industry. They spend more money on advertising iTMS than the top 2 competitors COMBINED.

Saying that they make no profits on iTMS is a ridiculous statement. That is like saying bakery makes no money on bread because they take all their advertising and labor costs out on just their bread revenue and none of their other products.

All that I'm saying is that Apple spends almost literally _ALL_ of that 40% margin on advertising the service combined with its use on an iPod. Telling me that isn't bringing in revenue is the most hilarious thing I have heard someone say. If Jobs told that to the board of directors he would be lying and could be liable for fraud.

Re:Pre announcements

[mamahuhu]

The issue I have with this problem is that it is all so US centric.

Guess why the US lags in mobile phone use? - stupid monopolies doing stupid things and the customers having to take it as it's the only game in town - literally sometimes.

As an alternative consider Hong Kong where I live.

There are something like 6 mobile phone companies (plus virtual operators) all competing for the same 7 million people. Almost everyone buys their phones at retail with no lock-in on the carrier that they use. I have bought subsidised phones but they are always cheap and nasty - I gave them to my parents to take back to the homeland as there's no carrier lock-in.

The way all these carriers compete is on call cost and service. It is very cheap to make calls in Hong Kong, free SMS, voicemail, call forwarding. Free calls within the network for designated numbers (Girl Friend to BF for instance) - and most crucially - you pay to both make AND receive calls on your mobile phone.

You pay for the convenience of receiving calls when you're out and about. Or to make calls when you're out. But interestingly land lines do NOT pay a toll to call a mobile.

Best yet is that you can call divert your phone to a landline and no one pays to make the call to your mobile number... unless the calling party uses a mobile.

What this does is encourage people to make lots of calls on their mobile and use it for their main number as no one cares that it is a mobile number - no cost to call it. Hong Kong was first to allow number transfer between carriers resulting in a market that is hugely competitive.

So we have low call costs, lots of value added services, everyone using mobile phones for most of their calls, many people have more than one phone (work, family and mistress :) and we get fancy phones with lots of features.

It is a totally different economy for mobile phones in Hong Kong. But there is a way to change the game for the US.

So to the iPod phone... In this HK context the choice of phone comes down to what people want to buy - usually the latest and greatest fashion phone. An iPod phone would be hugely popular here. It would be another fashion phone, the coolest must have toy. And as most people get their phones from suppliers other than the carriers there is no subsidy and nothing stopping an iTunes phone for Hong Kong.

But think of it in reverse: If Apple released an iPod with phone functionality at a slight premium over a standard iPod - say like the iPod Photo is a premium iPod... then it would not need subsidy. It's an iPod not a phone.... no one buys subsidised iPods.

But what has been spoken about is a phone with limited iTunes support - so you enter the realm of carrier subsidy. Wrong way to look at it totally.

I'd buy an iPod 40GB with GSM phone like a shot. And I'd pay HKD$4000 to do so. That's around $500 USD.

I would NOT pay HKD$800 ($100 USD) for a shitty subsidised phone with iTunes that locks me into bad expensive service from one carrier.

So what does Apple want to do? Sell iPods or license iTunes to phone manufacturers? There's no option to my mind. Screw the US carriers and change the game!

Re:Pre announcements

[mp3phish]

"So your claim of a 40% direct margin doesn't come close to including all direct costs, and completely ignores indirects."

Dude, have you ever run an e-commerce site which does reselling? You just admitted that the record label charges between 60-65c per song. Apple sells them for 99c. That is a 39% margin.

Mainstream online resellers make about 10% margin on their products. Infrastructure costs and all that other shit is the cost of doing the business. But the margin of the actual product is 39c. You must take your additional costs out of there as well.

I'm not talking about total operating costs. If I were I would be agreeing with you. Do you actually think Amazon.com makes more than 10% on their rock bottom prices for technology? Do you honestly think Newegg.com sells at more than 10% margins (on top of their product costs)

Everyone has a "break even" point on what they have to make in margin on their resales. Apple, being that they spend almost ALL of their margin on advertising, probably does have a near 1% total operating margin. This does not mean that they mark their songs up with a 1% margin though. It means that they mark them up at 39% and then spends say.. 35% of it on advertising and the rest on cost of infrastructure, programers, and sys admins.

"Your ridiculously inaccurate numbers would mean that Apple is netting over $100 million a year from music downloads -- nearly double Apple's entire net profit in 2003 and more than 2/3 of their incredible 2004 results."

Please go back and read my origional post. I _NEVER_ said that apple's total operational margin was 40%. _NEVER_. I simply stated that iTMS songs are a VERY HIGH MARGIN product. Most retailers would be happy to take 15% margin on products.. much less 40%. If apple chooses to burn all that on marketing hype to make their iPod more popular that is another story altogether. This has _NOTHING_ to do with total operational margin. I _NEVER_ said it did.

Re:Pre announcements

[mp3phish]

"You never "checked". Apple does not release information on their gross or net profits per song. There has been a credible analyst that puts it at 25c proft, and an analyst in TFA puts it at 4c. Truth is we really don't know."

No, I did check:

Apple gets 3 times as much money as musicians from each sale. Apple takes a 35% cut from every song and every album sold, a huge amount considering how little they have to do. Record labels receive the other 65% of each sale. Of this, major label artists will end up with only 8 to 14 cents per song, depending on their contract

And checked:

Sites in the US typically sell tracks for 99 cents each. The wholesale price is currently 65 cents per track

And Checked again:

The wholesale price of a track is thought to be around 65c, but the success of Apple's iTunes online music store, which to date has sold more than 200m songs and accounts for some 65% of the download market, has raised the eyebrows of music executives

And Checked again:

In the United States, online stores typical sell music downloads for about 99c per track. The wholesale cost of these tracks (that the shops pay) is about 65c."

And Checked again:

The majors are asking and getting about 65 cents per download from each 99 cent download from Apple

And Checked again:

with Apple paying the record companies an average of 65cents per track...[from a FORTUNE article]

And Checked again:
And straight from the FT horse's mouth. (reg required)

Please NOTICE for one second that I never talked about PROFITS. I talked about resellers margins. There is a BIG difference. Apple just happens to spend most of their margins on advertising. If you make a million dollars in a year doing business, but spend a million advertising, then that is a break even. It doesn't mean that you didn't sell something for a million dollars more than you paid for it though!

Re:Pre announcements

[mp3phish]

"Where did you check?"

Apple gets 3 times as much money as musicians from each sale. Apple takes a 35% cut from every song and every album sold, a huge amount considering how little they have to do. Record labels receive the other 65% of each sale. Of this, major label artists will end up with only 8 to 14 cents per song, depending on their contract

And checked:

Sites in the US typically sell tracks for 99 cents each. The wholesale price is currently 65 cents per track

And Checked again:

The wholesale price of a track is thought to be around 65c, but the success of Apple's iTunes online music store, which to date has sold more than 200m songs and accounts for some 65% of the download market, has raised the eyebrows of music executives

And Checked again:

In the United States, online stores typical sell music downloads for about 99c per track. The wholesale cost of these tracks (that the shops pay) is about 65c."

And Checked again:

The majors are asking and getting about 65 cents per download from each 99 cent download from Apple

And Checked again:

with Apple paying the record companies an average of 65cents per track...[from a FORTUNE article]

And Checked again:
And straight from the FT horse's mouth. (reg required)

"Because the numbers I have (as a shareholder) reveal that margins are closer to 6%"

Then you are not a very astute shareholder. Total operating profits ARE NOT THE SAME as resellers margin. Apple sells their songs at a significant margin. This isn't going to stop them from burning it all on (well recieved) advertising. But it certaintly does not have anything to do with "razor thin" margins. MARGINS are defined based on the cost of a product. PROFITS are defined based on your total revenues and your total costs. There is a HUGE difference here. iTMS is a VERY HIGH MARGIN business. It just so happens that Apple puts nearly every penny they earn off it back into the business in the form of advertising.

Get your facts straight before you go spouting off your BS about being a "shareholder" and your "portfolio" says differently and the "data you have" shows differently. Saying things like this doesn't make you look smarter. Having a Ph.D. doesn't make you look smarter. It just makes other people who read your posts confused because they are reading 2 different things (yours being the wrong one)

"I'll let the Ph.D. and my publications speak to that"

With all due respect, I hope your Ph.D. it is not business, being that you cannot accurately define margin and profit.

Re:Pre announcements

[mp3phish]

I'm sorry but you are definately wrong. The "subsidised" phones with contract are only discounted from the margin of the phone. The companies actually pay much less for them than their retail price. When they "subsidise" it they just drop it down to a thin margin. But they definately aren't LOSING money on it.

Mayb the $19 phone and the free phone. Sometimes there are sales where they drop the price significantly. But in the normal day to day operations, they make serious margins on their phones. This is not bullshit, and it isn't from TFA. It is a common misconception in the US because of the way cellular providers run their business and market their phones. The whole idea of taking a loss on the phone is fabricated by the cellualr providers. And you happen to believe them (I used to believe them until I found out how much phones cost overseas: less than they cost here with a 2yr contract)

Re:Pre announcements

[Anonymous Coward]

BWJONES: "The problem of course is that on sales of the songs themselves, Apple's profit is next to nothing."

mp3phish: "Last I checked, apple pays 60c per song and resells them for 99c. That is approximately a 40% margin"

mp3phish: "With all due respect, I hope your Ph.D. it is not business, being that you cannot accurately define margin and profit."

Hang on. Earlier BWJones says apple's profit is next to nothing. Then you countered with a comment that they had a 40% margin... Then you go on with a rant that says BWJones cannot accurately define margin and profit. You say profits are not the same as margin

Which contradicts your entire response in an earlier post! BWJones says Apple has next to no profit, and then you tried equating it to margin.

Contradicting yourself isn't a very good idea you know. It makes you look like a bleeding idiot trying to childishly twist facts to your own existing beliefs.

Re:Pre announcements

[mp3phish]

This is because Radio Shack is a 3rd party dealer. They buy the phone from the provider at full price, then take a loss on it and make it back up with the sale of the contract.

When the provider sells that 50$ phone to you for $150 they are making anywhere from 50-100$ margin on that sale. Then they give it back to you when you sell the contract (maybe they even give back more in some instances)

It is a common misconception that the cost of the phone is actually 150. The cellular providers actually pay significantly less and then resell them to Radio Shack (or whoever) at their list price. You are then forced to make it back up with the contract and sell the phone for less. You can do some fact checking by looking at how much phones without contract sell for overseas, and then compare them to the non-contract price in the US. Usually a $100 phone in europe (without contract) will cost you around $400-500 without contract in the US.

Re:Pre announcements

[mp3phish]

I see your point AC

My point (and I have gone off topic somewhat) is that apple is spending all this profit on advertising. Technically, you can probably say they aren't profiting much (though most analysts say 4-10%) However that is misleading. Their profits are in advertising dollars which is spent to sell iPods. Every iTunes commercial on TV out there. all of it.

Apple may be justifying that iTunes makes no profit but it is a misleading statement. What e-commerce business makes no profit and resells product which has no inventory and no shipping and recieving and shrink costs for a 35% margin?

The simple answer is none. Most online resellers have a 10% margin on products and make more profits than apple is claiming. And these people must maintain inventories and supply chains.

Apple is making a huge profit on this. They are just folding it back into iPod advertising and calling it a break even. It is misleading to their shareholders and most of all to their customers. because now customers are lead to believe that apple only shaves 4c on the dollar from each itunes sell when in actuallity they are shaving off significantly more and spending it on iPod TV ads.

Re:Pre announcements

[dodobh]

Markets going up do not add money to the company. Companies can only tap this market by issuing more shares.

Re:Pre announcements

[line.at.infinity]

Okay, let's have a look at DownHillBattle.org's statistics

Apple: 35c
Record label: 53c
Artist: 11c
Total: 99c

Now, this is highly inaccurate because it grossly underestimates Apple's actual "cut." More accurately, it is:

Apple: 64c
Credit card companies: 35c
Total: 99c

You see, downhillbattle.org totally missed the credit card companies! If apple is charging 99c per song, and Credit card companies are getting 35% of the "cut," then obviously Apple is getting a 65% "cut".

Either way, DownHillBattle.org got it right by saying Apple takes a huge cut. Other sites (e.g.) that grossly exaggerate by saying Apple gets next to nothing are the sites that should be viewed with a large grain of salt. Thanks to the honest, non-biased reporting of the ilks of DownHillBattle, eventually all the BS can be eliminated from this Earth!

Re:Pre announcements

[Keeper]

The way all these carriers compete is on call cost and service. It is very cheap to make calls in Hong Kong, free SMS, voicemail, call forwarding. Free calls within the network for designated numbers (Girl Friend to BF for instance) - and most crucially - you pay to both make AND receive calls on your mobile phone.

You pay for the convenience of receiving calls when you're out and about. Or to make calls when you're out. But interestingly land lines do NOT pay a toll to call a mobile.

Best yet is that you can call divert your phone to a landline and no one pays to make the call to your mobile number... unless the calling party uses a mobile.

What this does is encourage people to make lots of calls on their mobile and use it for their main number as no one cares that it is a mobile number - no cost to call it. Hong Kong was first to allow number transfer between carriers resulting in a market that is hugely competitive.

So we have low call costs, lots of value added services, everyone using mobile phones for most of their calls, many people have more than one phone (work, family and mistress :) and we get fancy phones with lots of features.


You haven't actually looked at cell phone plans in the US much lately have you?

The only difference with what you describe is that in the US is the contract bundle phones (if you go that route) aren't complete utter crap.

Re:Pre announcements

[mp3phish]

"Boy howdy, everybody here is saying you are an asshole and you know what? From your posts tonight, it looks like they might be right"

I'm sorry if I offended you. I will try to be nicer when pointing out blatant misleading statements. To be honest I felt I was too harsh after posting my reply. But to be honest everything I posted above is the truth.

You don't haveh to call me an asshole directly. I already know I am. I'd rather be an asshole than to allow people to mislead others about the facts. At the same time I will try to be nicer next time. I realized how it looks after the fact.

Next time I will stop at my first post and not reply to return flamebait. I am obviously outnumbered by people who still believe apple only scrapes by with iTMS. If you didn't believe that you wouldn't have posted the above comment.

Maybe my first comment was partially flamebait. It still doesn't make it right to spread misleading information onto slashdot. That was the purpose of my origional post. And it is the purpose of this post. To defend the truth. Any additional personal offense given to the doc is my fault and I'm sorry.

Re:Pre announcements

[mp3phish]

How do you assume the credit card company is making 35%? I have never heard of even small time processing companies charging more than a few percent. I have seen one or two that charge ~10% if they are doing some sort of added value to a small business.

At the pure volume apple is processing credit cards, I can say that they are definately not being charged 35% for CC processing. The ceiling would have to be 10% and in actuality it would be much smaller than that. Apple has the revenue to be negotiating thin cuts to the CC companies.

Re:Pre announcements

[blofeld42]

The transaction costs are quite high for small purchases. The credit card companies are taking a big chunk of the revenue in microtransactions, which is why Apple likes to sell baskets of more songs.

Piper Jaffery estimates the operating margin for iTunes could hit 5-10%. "Operating margin" is the pre-tax, pre-interest profit divided by the sales revenue. They may be advertising a bunch, but that is part of Apple's plot to sell more iPods and, indirectly, more Macs, since the iPods are in turn encouraging people to buy Macs.

They're running the iTunes store as more or less a clever promotion that helps sell hardware. The music purchased further helps lock the user into Apple hardware. Suppose you upgrade your iPod in a couple years. Are you going to switch to a new music format on another brand's music player? Not bloody likely if you've already got several hundred dollars worth of music in ACC format.

Re:Pre announcements

[Ohreally_factor]

No, but they add money to the owners of the company, the shareholders, who are ultimately the employers.

Re:Pre announcements

[Ohreally_factor]

Look at the date on your linked article. Apple has since reported, in conference calls when they report earnings, that iTMS is making a small profit, that volume is such that their over the break even point. Note that this profit was pretty small (I think on the order of a million bucks), so not highly significant to overall profitability, but it's a nice bragging point for Apple, that iTMS is no longer a loss leader.

However, what it still points out is how difficult it is to make enough profit on the iTMS model, which is why Napster and others are using or experimenting with subscription models.

Re:Pre announcements

[davesag]

I'd buy an iPod 40GB with GSM phone like a shot. And I'd pay HKD$4000 to do so. That's around $500 USD. yep me too. if my iPod could make calls that's one less device in my pocket. perhaps ipod + wifi + bluetooth + skype :-)

Re:Pre announcements

[Ohreally_factor]

CC companies have a minimum charge per transaction.

Re:Pre announcements

[line.at.infinity]

The 35% was an estimate based on the article that I linked to. It's an estimate just like all the other numbers being tossed around here.

I can say that they are definately not being charged 35%

According to your source that you trust, this seems to be true. According to Down Hill Battle, at least. They report that credit card companies are getting zero cents per transaction. They say the RIAA are getting an X cents cut (partially going to the artists) and Apple is getting a Y cents cut, and X + Y = .99 cents, so cc companies are getting zero, because neither Apple nor RIAA are a credit card company.

Actually, there was a /. article about this exact topic a long time ago. The article that slashdot was linking to said Apple barely profits, if not loses, with single song purchases, while they earn more with whole album purchases because they are being charged per transaction by the cc companies.

But I guess my argument stands no chance if it disagrees with you, especially when you're citing such reputable sources such as Down Hill Battle, the hallmark of unbiased articles.

Re:Pre announcements

[Ohreally_factor]

You don't support the truth by pulling numbers out of your ass nor pulling numbers out of someone else's ass. Your sources are unreliable. What Apple reports in it's conference call better be reliable, because if it's not, they're open to shareholder suits and SEC action, not to mention possible criminal prosecution (you ever hear of this guy, Eliot Spitzer?).

Re:Pre announcements

[BasilBrush]

No, I'm sorry but it doesn't work like that. All the handsets are subsidized when you buy them with a contract. There is an excess on the contract which is used to subsidize the phone. It is always supplied. The operators never, ever do a negative subsidy, which is what taking a profit would imply. If they did so, then the mobile phone stores could sell the phones without operator restriction cheaper than the tied ones. I don't know the specifics of the 2 phones you quote, because I work with Symbian phones. But the industry works the same way across all phone manufacturers.

Re:Pre announcements

[BasilBrush]

OK, first of all, the primary source is the FT. So drop all the secondard sources. They add no weight as they are simply repeating. The FT says "Wholesale prices are thought to be about 65 cents." Not "is", but "thought to be". As I said various analysts have guessed at various figures. You can't "check", because no one knows which of those analysts, if any, has guessed right.

And I'm sorry, but you don't understand what a gross profit is. You are talking about reseller margin as 99-65 = 34c. But gross profit is selling price - cost price. 99-65 = 34c. It's the same thing when you are in fact a reseller.

Re:Pre announcements

[BasilBrush]

I'm not in the US. I'm in the UK. All phones are subsidized. They don't make any profit on any of them. The same is true throughout Europe. If you are paying considerably more for the phones in the states, then possibly there is a different model. But given the confidence that spout heresay as fact elsewhere, I would suggest that no one takes your word for it here either.

Re:Pre announcements

[tbone1]

• Guess why the US lags in mobile phone use? - stupid monopolies doing stupid things and the customers having to take it as it's the only game in town - literally sometimes.

Actually, the real reason is that the land line infrastructure in the US isn't the complete crap it is in other countries. I've been to a lot of countries overseas and worked with quite a few foreigners here in the US. I know that, at one time, it would take up to six months to get a land line phone in Germany. The union got the government to make it illegal for anyone else to hook up a phone, and they would dig a new trench from the box to your house for every new hookup, then dig it up when you had it disconnected.

And from what I've heard, the situation in India was dire.

So if you're blaming government monopolies and stupid monopolies, you're partly right, but probably not in the way you thought.

Re:Pre announcements

[Gilmoure]

Oh, and it would be nice if people who are submitting articles would actually summarize the story rather than posting verbatim what the writer of the referenced article says.


Ha-ha! You expect slashdotters to produce original work and apply original thought.

Re:Pre announcements

[hey!]

That's a good point about the land lines. I should point out to be completely historically accurate though, that the land line system was already excellent in the US under the AT&T monopoly. If anything, once the break up was in full swing, the network suffered slightly in my opinion, although that was a temporary thing.

The thing that the breakup was supposed to do was to take an excellent phone system and make even more excellent. The idea was that providers would introduce digital services to compete with each other. In point of fact it was probably the worst thing they could have done to promote digital services. There was very little effort to promote digital services, since supporting them was expensive. People who insisted on getting ISDN soon found the telcos were terrible at provisioning and supporting the services because they hadn't made the investments in training and staffing needed to do a half way decent job.

The choice for a telco was simple -- spend money convincing people to buy into an expensive service they didn't understand and then spend tons of money to support it, or compete on price. Well, the rest as they say is history. We've had over a incredibly low prices on phone calls, and only recently had telcos competing to bring digital services to the home through DSL.

The thing is, while we clearly benefit from cheaper calls, and Internet technology is probably more flexible than ISDN, it has come at a price. Life is more complicated. Nobody had to understand anything like a "calling plan", unless you were a government regulator. The cost of figuring this out and managing telephone use in business has to be set against the direct cost savings. This is not to mention the horribly pushing telemarketers trying to get you to switch to some fly-by-night telephone company, which was the spam problem of the 80s.

There's a net benefit of course, but I suspect that most of us when we are on our deathbed would probably like to have the time we spent comparing calling plans back. Heck, I'll probably want my /. posting time back, I suppose.

Re:Pre announcements

[k_187]

I'd imagine that you'd want to get as much of the 6 billion dollars people spend on them too. LIke it or not, the ability to have 50 cent coming out of your phone is big business. Why do you think apple cares about it? The ability to have your itunes songs be your ringtones explodes their market.

Re:Pre announcements

[graphicsguy]

Oh, and it would be nice if people who are submitting articles would actually summarize the story rather than posting verbatim what the writer of the referenced article says.

Why? The summary is often either incredibly biased or just plain stinks. Posting a key sentence or two from the article isn't so bad, IMHO.

Re:Pre announcements

[moonbender]

I know that, at one time, it would take up to six months to get a land line phone in Germany.

At one time, whatever. Not in the last 10 years. And Germany has one of the most modern phone networks in the world, both land line and mobile. Full ISDN coverage when half of the US landlines couldn't (and maybe still can't) run a V.90 modem at more than 40kbaud.

Re:Pre announcements

[MouseR]

Apple once said it did "not quite a dime" per song, and that's before network infrastructure costs.

Considering the network costs, Apple makes less money when an entire album is purchased given that albums cost less than their total songs portfolio.

Re:Pre announcements

[Falrick]

There are something like 6 mobile phone companies (plus virtual operators) all competing for the same 7 million people

Well, we have Cingular, Verizon, T-Mobile, and US Cellular. Am I missing someone? That's at least 4 nation wide carriers. We also have much smaller local regional cellular carriers.

The way all these carriers compete is on call cost and service.

Ditto. But our carriers also compete on who can get what handset.

It is very cheap to make calls in Hong Kong, free SMS, voicemail, call forwarding. Free calls within the network for designated numbers (Girl Friend to BF for instance)

Ok, in the US we can one up you. On Verizon (and perhaps others?), all in network calls are free. Most, if not all, carriers have some sort of "family plan" where you can call anyone on your plan for free. These have dubious value, though, if the majority of calls don't go to people in your "family."

you pay to both make AND receive calls on your mobile phone.

The same is true in the US.

You haven't convinced me that HK is really any different than the US, at least as far as carriers go. The difference is culture. The bulk of the US isn't nearly as gadget driven as many of the Asian countries. Money is usually diverted into other investments such as cars and homes. Gadgets fall lower on the list. The gadget driven crowd, generally the 15-30 year olds, have less disposable income and are therefor able to pay less for their products, hence subsidized phones from the carriers.

Personally, I find it hard to justify you're HKD$4000 ($500 USD) fo a phone when that is more than what I paid for my last PC. Still, there are some people that do, and I say more power to 'em.

Re:Pre announcements

[Sleepy]

>The only difference with what you describe is that in the US is the contract bundle phones (if you go that route) aren't complete utter crap.

Um, no. You missed the parent poster's central point.

In the US, you can NOT buy your phone, and then plug it into ANY wireless carrier. In an open wireless market, you can switch providers ANY TIME and keep the same physical phone.

You can't do that in the US. That's why in the US the "new" cool phones are last year's clearance model for the rest of the world. The wireless cartel in the US is holding technology back. It's anti-competitive.

Re:Pre announcements

[vertinox]

But it is of course dishonest to both your customers and shareholders.

Name me one multi-national multi-million dollar corporation that is both honest to their customers and to their shareholders.

Take your time. I'd really like to do business with them.

Re:Pre announcements

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks to me like these are all derived from the Fortune article, not independent sources. So no matter how many repetitions you come up with, it still doesn't strengthen your argument.

Re:Pre announcements

[diamondsw]

You haven't been to Hong Kong lately, where every single person seems to have multiple phones. I'm talking 5-year-olds (literally!).

You haven't read Engadget, where they go on and on at the new innovative phones you can only get in Asia (because you don't have to deal with carriers deciding what phones you get to use).

You seem to have missed that people can buy phones relatively cheaply WITHOUT carrier subsidies.

You seem to have missed that NO ONE in HK has contracts and can switch providers daily, while nearly everyone in the US has one to get the phone discounts.

So let's see - the point is that by separating phone purchases and mobile service, pushing the number portability earlier, and a single phone standard, Hong Kong has a hugely competitive mobile phone market, both forcing better features, better phones, and better service.

Re:Pre announcements

[ivan256]

There are something like 6 mobile phone companies [...] It is very cheap to make calls in Hong Kong, free SMS, voicemail, call forwarding. Free calls within the network for designated numbers (Girl Friend to BF for instance) - and most crucially - you pay to both make AND receive calls on your mobile phone. [...] land lines do NOT pay a toll to call a mobile.

That's pretty much how it is in the US now too.

The main reason people don't buy their phones at retail in the US is because most cell networks in the US use incompatable technology. This is the *real* reason that phone tech has lagged behind in the US. We're mostly caught up with the rest of the world at this point though.

Re:Pre announcements

[erik_flannestad]

>Believe me, if the iTMS store was profitable, Apple would not keep it a secret...

Not so sure about that. It seems to me, the iTunes music business is a delicate balancing act between the music labels interests and Apple's.

I don't know that the labels would tolerate Apple making huge profits reselling the label's property.

Re:Pre announcements

[mmkkbb]

On Verizon (and perhaps others?), all in network calls are free.

On Verizon, you can only make free in-network calls if you have the $50/month plan.

You can have unmetered local calling with a land line for around $15/month + hidden fees, which AFAIK doesn't exist anywhere else.

Re:Pre announcements

[thparker]

I linked to the Q4 report. That included year end numbers for fiscal 2003 and 2004. The cash flow is impressive, but almost certainly not attributed to massive profit from iTMS.

Re:Pre announcements

[thparker]

You're partly right. I was merely pointing out that the net margin was roughly 3%-4%, not 40%. But note that fiscal 2004 results were over $250 million, so at the current rate iTMS would be contributing quite a bit less than 10% to the bottom line.

It's very possible that the iTMS will eventually contribute over $1 billion a year in revenue and will be a pretty big contributor to the company's profit. I just don't think it's there yet. Competition is coming whether Apple wants it or not, so there isn't really any reason to put out disinformation about this.

Re:Pre announcements

[thparker]

Again, I'll reiterate that you don't really seem to understand business. Gross margin, which is what you're talking about, is a fine starting point but just isn't the end of the story. But you aren't even including all the components of their direct margin -- you're taking one direct cost, the record label fee, and saying that, wow, that's an awesome margin. But that's NOT their margin, direct or otherwise. It's just their net revenue after a single direct cost, which is pretty meaningless.

I think your confusion is coming from trying to compare this to physical products, where you buy something tangible from one person and resell it to another. That's not what is happening here. Apple is not buying 100,000 Brittany .AAC files from RIAA and reselling them. They're providing digital files and distribution, and the cost of goods sold calculation is somewhat more involved.

Re:Pre announcements

[thparker]

While that may be true, I'd expect that the agreement between the labels and Apple requires more disclosure of their cost structure than the general public receives. Just a guess.

Re:Pre announcements

[mp3phish]

lol: did you bother to go past the first link? Just shows your closed mindedness. The downhill article is talking about apple's cut before their costs. Just like it talks about the RIAA cut before THEIR costs. Your argument is in the same direction as mine. It doesn't refute anything I have posted. I agree with you 100% that the CC companie gets a cut of the 35% that apple gets.

Re:Pre announcements

[thparker]

My point (and I have gone off topic somewhat) is that apple is spending all this profit on advertising.

Please point me to one piece of iTMS advertising. It may be out there, but I've never seen it. I've seen tons of advertising for the iPod, which would definitely be part of how Apple spends the iPod's gross margin, but I haven't seen them heavily promote the iTMS. (Apart from the big Pepsi promotion which is probably paid for almost entirely by Pepsi, given how these things work.)

I just don't think you get it. iPod advertising is not the same as iTMS advertising and it doesn't get reflected as part of iTMS net profit. Now that I see how clueless you are ("folding [iTMS profit] back into iPod advertising and calling it break even") it seems appropriate that your original post has been modded flamebait. This isn't even remotely close to business reality. It might be appropriate to allocate some of the iPod advertising cost to iTMS, but determining the appropriate allocation would be pretty complicated, probably immaterial from an accounting standpoint, and probably not worth the effort.

Re:Pre announcements

[mp3phish]

"And I'm sorry, but you don't understand what a gross profit is. You are talking about reseller margin as 99-65 = 34c. But gross profit is selling price - cost price. 99-65 = 34c. It's the same thing when you are in fact a reseller."

And your right. Profits is revenue - costs. My origional post is in support of that. My problem with all this "barely profitable" and "low margin sales" etc etc posts is just that. People aren't taking into account that iTMS is an online e-commerce site RESELLING a product. The margin on those products are 35%. Most online retailers which have WAY more to worry about such as warehouses, inventory, and shipping and recieving scrape by on 10% reseller margins and are still more profitable than apple is claiming to be.

My main premise is that Apple is not stupid. They can run a business just like everyone else on the internet is by minimizing costs. If they are making 35% on their resales. And that is their only business for iTMS. And they are barely scraping by. Then Apple iTMS is a failed business model.

The point I'm trying to make isn't that apple isn't scraping by on paper. It is that they are EXTREMELY profitable in iTMS. It just so happens that they do not put that profit into dividends. Instead they put it back into growing their business elsewhere (iPod+iTunes TV commercials, etc).

If you run a business and you have a ton of profit you have some options. One is to give that money to the stockholders. An other is to build your business. Apple is doing the latter. Just because shareholders aren't seeing direct dividends from iTMS doesn't mean it isn't bringing in any profits.

Re:Pre announcements

[mp3phish]

"Apple is not buying 100,000 Brittany .AAC files from RIAA and reselling them. They're providing digital files and distribution, and the cost of goods sold calculation is somewhat more involved."

This is exactly what they are doing. The only difference is they don't have to buy 100,000 at a time. They just have to report which ones they sold and collect their check.

It is a zero inventory resale business. The cost of goods sold calculation is NOT more involved, if anything less involved. With a physical product you have to put in warehouse costs. Shipping and recieving labor. Inventory shrink costs. RMA costs. Markdowns costs. the list goes on.

None of these costs are involved with iTMS. Instead they have other costs such as bandwidth (which online retailers also have to deal with) and system admin costs )which also online retailers must have) and development costs (which again, retailers must deal with)

There isn't much special about iTMS to any other ecommerce business other than the fact that their costs are significantly LOWER Than any other physical product reseller. So trying to argue the OPPOSITE doesn't really make much sence.

You can criticise my understanding of supply chains and reselling business and revenues and costs all day. it doesn't change the fact that your argument is not supportive of iTMS's reality. If you are trying to say that iTMS has more costs than an online retailer of physical products, then you must have no faith in Steve Jobs as a CEO.

Re:Pre announcements

[mp3phish]

Every iPod commercial out there says "iPod + iTunes"

they aren't just ipod commercials. They are iTunes commercials... Some might argue that they would split the cost of that commercial up and put half into the cost of iTMS and the other half into the cost of iPod but you can't really say. At that point you are splitting hairs because apple is one company and it is rare for them to be reporting exact costs for each component of their business. And since they don't you can only analyse their business model and try to come up with an answer.

My analysis just points to the fact that they resell high margin songs with similar but lower costs than a normal online retailer and claim they are unprofitable or barely profitable. The numbers just don't add up.

Re:Pre announcements

[BasilBrush]

I can see you aren't actually an investor. You are speaking as if the difference between a growth company that pays no dividends and a high yield company might be relevant to whether they are making a profit on iTMS. It's irrelevant. Even if revenue was a key to that, which it isn't, Apple still gets more revenue from it's Macs than it's iPods, and more from it's iPods than from iTMS. The reason we don't know what the margin is on iTMS is because Apple chose not to break it out on it's 10K SEC filing.

Stop repeating 35% as if that's what it is. That is only an anakyst's guess. We just don't know.

Where I will agree with you though is that I believe that Apple is making more money out of iTMS than they are letting on. This is to discourage other companies from competing.

Re:Pre announcements

[M-G]

In the US, you can NOT buy your phone, and then plug it into ANY wireless carrier. In an open wireless market, you can switch providers ANY TIME and keep the same physical phone.

You can, as long as the carriers in question are using the same technology, and you didn't benefit from a healthy subsidy on the phone. Go buy a full retail-priced GSM phone, and get a SIM card for whatever carrier you want to use. Buy a full price CDMA phone, and you can have whatever CDMA carrier you want service it.

It's the subsidies that the carriers provide on handsets that create most of the problems. They've spent a lot of money on you up front, and they want to get that back. You can't blame them for that, but it sure makes life a PITA for the rest of us. I spent the time researching how to get pictures and ringtones on my phone without paying my carrier for it, and many others do the same.

It seems though, that given the money people have been willing to cough up for an iPod, that perhaps Moto should release the damn thing unlocked and let early adopters fork over the cash for it. Once there's good buzz around it, the first carrier to give in and subsidize the phone will get a lot of people who want it, but didn't want to pay full fare.

Re:Pre announcements

[M-G]

I used to believe them until I found out how much phones cost overseas: less than they cost here with a 2yr contract

You can buy lots of things at lower retail costs overseas. Take the recent discussions about textbook costs. But the higher price in the US isn't because of the retailer making a higher margin, it's because their wholesale cost is higher.

So even though a consumer may be able to buy phone x overseas for USD200, it doesn't mean that the US carrier doesn't have to pay USD250 for them.

Re:Pre announcements

[Keeper]

a) I never claimed I've been to Hong Kong lately, nor do I see the benefit of a single person owning multiple cell phones
b) You can't get those phones here because the network infrastructure here doesn't support them. Economics of scale...Hong Kong=small; US=way bigger -- that technology doesn't come for free or deploy to rural areas by itself. It works in Hong Kong due to the population density.
c) Cell phone companies don't control what price cell phone manufacturers charge for phones
d) Contracts aren't manditory; people get them because they're a good deal
e) I've never had a problem with available features or service

Re:Pre announcements

[line.at.infinity]

lol: did you bother to go past the first link? Just shows your closed mindedness.

Dude, there are thousands of posts made on a daily basis, with thousands of links posted. I'm not sure how you can read anything out of the fact that nobody wastes their time by reading every link.

Suppose Apple is paying companies/organizations A, B, C, .... and Z a bunch of money. What the geniuses over at Down Hill Battle are saying is that Apple's cut is n cents per song because Apple pays G a certain amount, and 99 cents minus that amount is n cents. That's a pretty stupid calculation, and it's manipulation of information; an exaggeration to make their argument sound more meaningful than it actually is. It's designed to mislead readers into thinking that Apple earns about a 40% margin because the money isn't going to RIAA.

BWJones originally said "The problem of course is that on sales of the songs themselves, Apple's profit is next to nothing."

To which you quote and reply "Last I checked, apple pays 60c per song and resells them for 99c. That is approximately a 40% margin."

And in your post, you pretty explicitly state that you think money not going to RIAA == Profit for Apple.

Re:Pre announcements

[ePhil_One]

You haven't been to Hong Kong lately, where every single person seems to have multiple phones. I'm talking 5-year-olds (literally!).

This is far more of a cultural thing, it has little to do with carriers, beyond the fact that OUR carriers aren't targeting 5 year olds thakfully.

You haven't read Engadget, where they go on and on at the new innovative phones you can only get in Asia (because you don't have to deal with carriers deciding what phones you get to use).

No, I haven't. But unless they specialize in ranting just the cell phone market, they also go on about all the other technology the asian markets get first. Its a cultural thing again, as they are far more willing to churn through new techs than we in the US are. The Asian says "I have to have that!", the American says "Why do I need that?". Again, this has little to do with the carriers

You seem to have missed that people can buy phones relatively cheaply WITHOUT carrier subsidies.

You seem to have missed that people can buy phones for FREE (as in beer) with carrier subsidies. Phone portability is less of an issue when you can get a new phone free every time you re-sign.

You seem to have missed that NO ONE in HK has contracts and can switch providers daily, while nearly everyone in the US has one to get the phone discounts.

Unless you can show me stats that Hong Kong users switch plans significantly more often than once a year, I'm not really buying this as a huge advantage. Is it better for consumers? In theory. You could "try a carrier for a month and go back when their service sucks" But I've been with the same carrier for 7 years, and get a shiny new phone about every 18 months for free. If I really want to jump carriers before my contract ends I can pay back the subsidy or drop to a minimal plan until my contract expires.

Hong Kong has a hugely competitive mobile phone market, both forcing better features, better phones, and better service.

Sprint tried the no subsidy/no contract plan for years, it wasn't really working for them. Given a choice, most prefered the subsidized phone. I understand they've finally abandoned this now.

ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile, Nextel, Cingular, Virgin, Sprint. Thast 7 carriers I can name off the top of my head (Ok, two of the 4 are now gone in the last year due to mergers). I think its safe to say the USA has a very competitive market as well.

Keep in mind too, while Hong Kong has 100 or so square Miles to wire for covergae, the USA has more like 3.5 million. This affect the carriers ability to provide a ubiquitous infrastructure.

Say WHY

[mr100percent]

Why can't the poster include a one-sentence explanation of Why? He even copied the headline. From the article:

Verizon, Cingular, and other wireless operators want customers to pay to put music on phones [instead of copying them from a computer.] They think getting a full song should be like getting a ring tone.

This isn't a first. Verizon modified the firmware on the Treo 600 and Motorola v710 camera phones to prevent the images from being copied off via Bluetooth. Instead, they wanted you to send the photos through their pay service.

Re:Say WHY

[jonwil]

Thankfully that cant happen in a country like Australia with REAL compeition in the phone market and REAL choice of phones.

Re:Say WHY

[Queer Boy]

This isn't a first. Verizon modified the firmware on the Treo 600 and Motorola v710 camera phones to prevent the images from being copied off via Bluetooth.

I was lucky to get my T616 before Cingular started on the Verizon kick, crippling phones. Luckily hardware companies are more than happy to sell their products directly.

I remember going into a Cingular store and the guy behind the desk didn't even know what firmware was. I asked if there was anyone that worked there that could actually do more than ring up a sale and he gave me a list of stores in the district that had a technician at them. It was a short list.

I don't have a problem paying extra for a phone where if I have questions or problems I can actually get answers for it.

Re:Say WHY

[arbitrary]

This isn't a first. Verizon modified the firmware on the Treo 600 and Motorola v710 camera phones to prevent the images from being copied off via Bluetooth

Well, not exactly. While VZW crippled the v710's functionality, the Treo 600 doesn't even have a bluetooth chipset (that's the 650, which VZW has yet to support.)

Additionally, the Treo 600 installs a link "Treo Pictures" on your desktop when you install the Palm Desktop software so you can transfer pictures back and forth between your desktop and your phone. Not sure if they've crippled it so that it can't *beam* images, though. You can use MP3 ringtones all day long with Phone Technician ($6).

Re:Say WHY

[Raptor CK]

They did no such thing to the Treo 600.

The Treo 600 doesn't *have* Bluetooth, and Verizon hasn't adopted the Treo 650 yet.

(Will they block OBEX on the 650? Possibly. There's no way of knowing.)

Re:Say WHY

[mr100percent]

Apparently my mistake. Engadget is reporting that Cingular and Sprint modified the firmware on the Treo 650, meaning that you can't use it as a dialup modem as is normally possible. The Sprint phone has a hack, but not Cingular, AFAIK. (though this is months old)

Re:Say WHY

[khrtt]

Verizon modified the firmware on the Treo 600 and Motorola v710 camera phones to prevent the images from being copied off via Bluetooth.

Verizon has always been nice to their customers. I switched to another carrier when they started adding new hidden fees every month, about 3 years ago.

Re:Say WHY

[Raptor CK]

Yeah... to be fair, it's only masked out on the Sprint ROM, and when it's running, it's a little flaky.

If it handled disconnects and general stupid user faults, I'd be more upset at Sprint and Cingular, but to be honest, the 650's BT DUN implementation is craptacular.

(This doesn't excuse Verizon's dickery with OBEX on *other* phones, of course. They can burn for that one.)

Hello Moto

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, what do you expect when you partner two large companies together, for a collaboration project... there's bound to be issues combining work forces on a single project. I'm not all that surprised. But, I don't think they have much to worry about, since even if mp3 phones come out with lots of storage, it's unlikely they'll have the same appeal the apple brand has.

This is why US is waaay behind in cellular tech..

[dwipal]

I visit India and other contries, and i must say that the phones and technologies people use there is WAAAY superior than what we use in US.

Synchronizing the phones with computer is standard there, and so is "SMSing" ringtones. If one person buys a ringtone from the carrier (which is around 8 cents), that ringtone can be SMSed to all the friends. There is a nominal charge for SMS also, basically its a huge market which people simply love.

What sucks here is iTunes sells whole song for 99c, and the f**** cell phone carrier sells the MIDI file for that song for 3 dollars, that expires in 3 months!!!! No wonder people use sites like 3guploads.com or PitPim to put ringtones on their phones. The carriers are simply killing the technology by locking too much stuff.

iPod Cell Phone?

[ZipR]

Will you dial by twirling your fingers in a circle on the rotary sensor like an old pulse dialing phone?
I could get behind that.

Re:iPod Cell Phone?

[bird603568]

Also think about the potential of text messageing. They put the letters and numbers around the wheel and you "spin" it it a rotar.

Re:iPod Cell Phone?

[natrius]

The twirling your fingers action also improves your expertise in pleasuring women.

Girlfriend: Did you just dial my best friend's number on me? How the hell do you know her number?!

Recipe for disaster.

Re:iPod Cell Phone?

[XFilesFMDS1013]

Remember where you're posting this....

Re:iPod Cell Phone?

[Peden]

Nokia has a weird phone that works in a manner a bit like that. It's a bit bigger than a lipstick, and numbers/letters are scrolled onto the screen using some sort of joystick. Only saw an early model of this phone at a convention so I dont know if its still on the market. Looked sassy at first, but failed with the impossible to use interface.

Re:iPod Cell Phone?

[flyingsquid]

Will you dial by twirling your fingers in a circle on the rotary sensor like an old pulse dialing phone?

Actually, it was going to have a one-button interface, just like the Mac. Surprisingly this product didn't do well in focus group testing.

Re:iPod Cell Phone?

[Habahaba]

Just a note to all the Apple fans here at appledot, B&O has had a phone with this kind of interface for years (and it's great as about every interface B&O has ever designed). Actually years before any iPod.

I just wish that Apple would have actually tried B&O's expensive MP3 player before they made one without a display (the shuffle). B&O again had the interface right one, but Apple failed badly as they could not understand how to manage playlists without screen. It's actually darn easy.

Re:iPod Cell Phone?

[Ohreally_factor]

I'm stealing some one else's joke, but what you're describing is the iPhone Shuffle. Because life is random, why shouldn't your phone calls be random?

Re:Whata ya wanna bet

[Anonymous Coward]

That the mother of all software companies drove a wedge into that deal.....? "Mother of all software companies"? I think "abusive stepfather" is more appropriate.

Same issues as usual, actually

[Dancin_Santa]

Basically there are two opposing parties in any cellphone you see on the market. The first is the obvious one, the handset maker. The other is the operator (Vodafone, Sprint, etc). While it may seem like these two would normally be a happy bunch. But they aren't.

Handset makers want to stylize their phone as much as possible. Adding features and making their phone stand out from the rest of the pack. Operators want all the phones to support a certain set of basic functionality and fit into a certain form factor. They don't want to allow the handset maker's trademarks overshadow their own. On the other hand, the makers want it to be obvious to the user who the maker of that phone is.

Apple, and to a large extent Microsoft too, have very strong brands. They love branding. That's why we're talking about an iPhone and not an Apple-produced cell phone. But operators don't want that kind of power shifted into the hands of the makers.

So you get what we have here, which is the way he wants it.

Re:Same issues as usual, actually

[wannabgeek]

In India, the handset and the carrier are pretty much detached. Lot of people by the handset they like separately and then simply buy the SIM card from the service provider. Allows them to change carrier/number etc pretty easily as there is no network locking or anything. Of course, we don't get the handset for free, tho.

Re:Same issues as usual, actually

[novitk]

That's because Motorolas and Nokias of this world don't give a shit about some start-up Indian network providers. Which would change when the providers become big and powerfull - the state US wireless market is in.

Re:Same issues as usual, actually

[daninbusiness]

I don't think that the situation in India (or China) is going to resemble that in the US for some time (if ever).

While a lot of manufactuers may not give much of a shit about the network providers in developing nations, I think that the Motorolas, Nokias, and Samsungs give a shit about the retail markets in India and China that sell to the consumer directly.

This arrangement is probably more profitable too, since they can charge full price per phone.

There amount of cell phone advertising (by manufacturer) that goes on in Asia - billboards everywhere, magazine ads, bus advertisements, etc is huge, since instead of there being an influence on carrier competition there is more about whichever brand of phone is cooler or more functional. Young people may change handsets every 2 or 3 months in places like Hong Kong and Singapore.

With 1 billion potential mobile phone users in India and China respectively, most every manufacturer wants a piece of the action. Already mobile phone use in these countries outstrips that of landlines.

It's just a different situation in Asia.

But it seems that most people involved are satisifed with the present arangement.

Re:Same issues as usual, actually

[fenris_23]

Motorola has dealt with this before by creating a new company to introduce the technology they developed to the market - Nextel. Of course, Nextel has since pulled a Jerry Springer on Motorola with the latest merger and probably abandonment of the iDEN architecture.

But, there is nothing like iDEN right now (no, CDMA push to talk is just a phone call) and many business customers value it very much

This is product is no different. It doesn't take an MBA to realize that there is a huge number of potential customers that carry *both* iPods and cell phones with them everywhere. A very well design cell-phone integrated with iPod technology would be awesome and I am sure there would be significant demand.

This is also a central piece of Zander's strategy of seamless mobility. Zander's dream is that you should not have to pay for songs on each device or even think about what device on which your media is currently being stored. It sucks to have to agree with a fortune 500 CEO but he absolutely right and I hope these two companies together can make a significant dent in the crap-hole barriers these little greedy service providers and the recording industry have been erecting.

uhhh

[Illserve]

A phone in my MP3 player? That's pretty easy to resist. I beat the living tar out of my phone. Most people do.

The ipod is pretty tough yea, but it wouldn't last a week in the chassis of my mobile phone.

Nor would I want my phone to have a net worth of $400 either.

Can we get over this fixation with phone/mp3/toaster oven/breadmakers already? Their day has come and gone. I want devices grouped by how I use and abuse them.

Re:uhhh

[Stone316]

I agree.. Mine phone has some nice gouges out of it.. Add to the fact how many times i've drop it on the ground getting out of my car and the holster breaking twice and sending my phone tumbling.. I don't think a HD based MP3 player is going to be a very good idea.. Now the flash one would be another story.

Ignoring this, who the hell is going to pay to download a song to their phone when they have already legally purchased it? I have camera phone and its rediculus how much they charge you to email/upload a 10k picture. To add insult to injury, you pay 100 bucks for a data to go cable and software and the only thing you can do is sync your phone with your contact list. No outlook syncronization, can't upload ringtones, download images. Its a freaking ripoff... At least my company is paying for it.

Re:uhhh

[Quiet_Desperation]

I beat the living tar out of my phone. Most people do.

Once again, I am glad not to be most people. :)

Re:uhhh

[Silverlancer]

This is why I use a Lyra HD. Its a gigantic, ugly MP3 player. Its incredibly cheap: when I bought it two years ago it was just 180 dollars for a 20 gigabyte player (when iPods were 400!). Now you can get them for hardly 100 bucks. They're big, ugly, and heavy, but damnit they can take a beating. At one point a small piece of plastic got stuck in the display and wouldn't move--I solved it by banging the thing about 100 times against a hard wooden table. Kept playing the whole time too without skipping. If it was an iPod, it would be in pieces. But these things, however cumbersome they are, are built like tanks. I can drop it all I want and not have to imagine a dead-iPod-horror-story.

Re:uhhh

[Razzak]

Sounds like you don't even have an ipod.
Further, since you don't want a $400 phone (newsflash: if you pay $200 for a phone with a new contract, it's worth probably about $400) that means you're not interested in having a phone that can play mp3's.

The toaster-oven idea really is the holy grail of mobile devices. Don't compare it to software toaster-oven (say, Mozilla suite) because I don't have to physically carry around Firefox, Sunbird, and Thunderbird.

Integration is sweet. Stop the hating.

Re:uhhh

[seanadams.com]

I want devices grouped by how I use and abuse them.

Sure you do, until the price/performance/convenience reality hits you. Would you pay $100 for a phone, plus $300 for an iPod, plus $200 for a still cam, plus $400 for a camcoder, plus $300 for a PDA, plus $20 for a USB keychain disk, etc etc, or $300 for one device that fits in your pocket and does all of this?

Today, you might prefer separate devices to do each of these things because the multifuction devices are all shitty at any given function.

However, all of these devices need approximately the same kind of storage, CPU, IO, battery, UI, buttons and so on, even though you only ever use one function at at a time. However, tying the functions together (eg taking a picture and then instantly sending it to someone on your phone list) is damn compelling - that's why they're converging.

Re:uhhh

[kylemonger]

I want devices grouped by how I use and abuse them.

Sure you do, until the price/performance/convenience reality hits you. Would you pay $100 for a phone, plus $300 for an iPod, plus $200 for a still cam, plus $400 for a camcoder, plus $300 for a PDA, plus $20 for a USB keychain disk, etc etc, or $300 for one device that fits in your pocket and does all of this?

You mean "and does all this poorly." It's not like a Swiss army knife; these combo phones are like a cheap, flimsy, tradeshow swag knockoff.

Re:uhhh

[Illserve]

Convenience? The more you cram into one device, the worse job it will do at all of them. Don't even try to convince me that the picture quality from some integrated widget is going to be within a mile of the quality of a $300 camera or $400 camcorder.

And I don't to have to push a few buttons to get my pda/phone/camera into phone mode to make a call. Nor do I want some kiddie to hack into my pda/phone/camera and download everything about me.

I want a phone that calls people, it should be lightweight, very very tough (no 5 inch touch screen!) and not have a camera lens that I have to worry about. Nor do I want to recharge it every day. Integrated devices sacrifice in durability and longevity.

I want an ipod with many gigs of storage so that I can just grab it whatever mood I'm in, and find a suitable playlist. Integrated devices sacrifice in storage (at least right now)

I want a camera that takes good pictures and has a big honkin lens to capture lots of light for decent night time pictures. It should have a variety of features that allow me to tailor my pictures to different techniques (exposures, focus settings, etc). Integrated device sacrifice in picture quality.

You get what you pay for.

Re:uhhh

[Illserve]

I do have an ipod. I leave it at home unless I need it, because if I took it everywhere, it would have broken long ago, and gotten soaked.

Integration sucks. Stop the crack smoking.

Re:uhhh

[civilizedINTENSITY]

All I want is an iPod/iPaq/HP-48 that runs GNU Emacs!

Re:uhhh

[Curious Yellow 82]

Yes, also, now you can take pictures with your phone which you can't transfer from your phone to your PC, also, if the picture you've just taken on your phone doesn't exist on your PC your PC will automatically delete it without asking you twice! Y'know, for all this money I'm quite tempted to just get an electromagnetic wave receiver implanted in my brain, the problem is, would it interfere with my ipod? :o

Re:uhhh

[NanoGator]

"Can we get over this fixation with phone/mp3/toaster oven/breadmakers already? Their day has come and gone. I want devices grouped by how I use and abuse them."

That's fine for you, but there are a lot of people out there (despite your claim) that actually take decent care of their phones. There are even those of us that would like our phones to work as a basic entertainment device since it goes a lot of places that Game Boys, Digital Cameras, and Mp3 players often don't go.

My point? Why does it have to be one or the other? Why cannot it simply be accepted that there are some who want simple and rugged and others that want robust? In other words, why are YOUR desires more important than what the market is clearly saying it likes?

Re:uhhh

[rgmoore]

It's not like a Swiss army knife; these combo phones are like a cheap, flimsy, tradeshow swag knockoff.

Sounds exactly like a Swiss army knife to me. It's really cool that a Swiss army knife can cram a bunch of gadgets into a compact form factor, but that comes at the cost of none of the gadgets doing a very good job. I have a real knife for when I want to cut things and a real toolbox for when I want to fix things. About the only thing that my Swiss army knife is good for is as a nicknack to keep my hands busy when I'm thinking.

Re:uhhh

[timeOday]

All I want is an iPod/iPaq/HP-48 that runs GNU Emacs!

The iPaq can already do all those things. I'm a particular fan of the HP48 emulator, Power48. Here's emacs.

As for playing mp3's, almost anything with a headphone jack (including iPaqs) can do that.

Re:uhhh

[timeOday]

The only one that really doesn't fit in is a full-sized camera for artistic shots.

PDA/Cellphone cameras are useful for something else: they're high-bandwidth input devices. You don't carry a wad of business cards people have given you; you just push a button and capture the card into your PDA. You capture whiteboard contents. You grab the VIN of the cars you're interested in at a car lot so you can run Carfax on them later.

Pretty soon the megapixels will be high enough to capture an 8.5x11" page of text all at once, which will be great.

Re:uhhh

[Illserve]

Megapixels be damned.

The amount of light entering through that pinhole of a camera lens is going to be sufficient for reliable OCR of 10 point fonts on a piece of A4 in variable lighting conditions approximately when the laws of physics stop working.

Re:uhhh

[mrchaotica]

Yeah, I agree -- I want a phone that does exactly TWO things: makes voice & data cellular connections, and connects to my computer. I want it to be the same shape as a PCMCIA card, and in fact work as a cellular modem. All it needs is a number pad, send and end. A screen would be optional, and should be nothing more than a 7-segment black-and-white LCD to show the number.

Is that too much to ask?

Re:uhhh

[SEE]

Easier to carry one in your pocket than multiple tools; if you're not at home and you run into a need for a Phillips-head screwdriver, a Swiss Army knife is somewhat better than nothing.

Re:uhhh

[Ohreally_factor]

He'll be surprised by the unexplained calls on his bill until he realizes his phone has been calling a support group.

Re:uhhh

[khrtt]

I beat the living tar out of my phone.

I treat my phones as disposable too, i.e. my phone is usually ready for the landfill by the time I cat get a new one for free from the carrier. I also treat the carriers as disposable, i.e. switch them every year just to get in on promotions. It's a good life.

I don't own an iPod - it wouldn't last me a month. With a hard drive, and all. I use a flash mp3 player, a 1gb model. And I'd much rather treat it as disposable too, except I'm still waiting for someone to start giving me a new mp3 player every year for free.

Re:uhhh

[Luscious868]

Convenience matters to me in this case. Generally I agree with you, but when it comes to an mp3 player / phone combination, I can actually see a use for it. I don't like taking my iPod with me everywhere I go, because I'm afraid that I would either lose it or it would get damaged. I'm a guy (no purse to put the iPod in) and my pockets are generally full with my wallet, keys, and cell phone. When I'm commuting or going on a long vacation or drive and I know that I want music, then I always take my iPod and its case with me, but there are times that I don't have it with me that I wish I did. I was considering getting an iPod Shuffle when it was first announced. It's so small that I could fit it in one of my pockets and always have it with me and it's inexpensive enough that if I ever lost or broke it, I could afford to replace it right away.

Enter the iPhone. Since I always have my cell phone with me anyway, why carry around both a cell phone and an iPod shuffle (which has no screen BTW), when I can have both on a single device (with a screen for browsing through the songs on the phone)? This would be the perfect device for someone like me. If I want my entire collection, I bring the iPod. If I get an unplanned opportunity to listen to some music and don't have my iPod with me, I can listen to music via the cell phone. The only issue I'd be concerned about is battery life. I don't like to have to recharge a phone everyday. Every two to three days is ideal for me, but every day just isn't practical.

Well then.

[mcc]

If that really is the problem, then why deal with Verizon and Cingular at all? Release the thing in Europe, or somewhere (if some such place exists) where consumers have enough of a choice of cell phone providers that the provider can't stop the customer from doing what they like with their own phone. Once it's been out awhile, quietly try to make the public aware that the people in Europe have access to this phone iPod thing and that the only reason why Americans can't use it is because the American cell phone oligopoly doesn't like it. At that point the idea of defecting will start to look awfully attractive to the local providers...

Isn't Motorola supposed to be German anyway?

Re:Well then.

[tim1724]

Isn't Motorola supposed to be German anyway?

Huh? What are you talking about?

Motorola is a US corporation, traded on the NYSE (ticker symbol MOT). Its headquarters are in Schaumburg, Illinois. How does that make it German?

Re:Well then.

[mrchaotica]

I think he's confusing it with Philips or Nokia (which are European, at least).

Re:Well then.

[mcc]

Just a question. Apparently the answer is "no"

Re:Well then.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the answer is "no, dumbass. Open Google in another window and become informed before shooting your mouth off."

Re:Well then.

[BasilBrush]

Because the story is exactly the same in Europe. All operators are unwilling to see other people making money for services on phones that they have subsidized. In fact the European operators are probably more hard nosed on this one because they overpaid for 3G licenses a few years ago and are still struggling to make the money back.

Re:Well then.

[NetNifty]

Dunno about mainland Europe, but here in the UK the only phones which I've heard are crippled are the ones the manufacturer has done - which I've only heard of happening with Sharp phones.

Re:Well then.

[yardbird]

"Schaumburg"? I don't know, sounds pretty German to me.

Re:Well then.

[yivi]

Motorola is a US corporation, traded on the NYSE (ticker symbol MOT). Its headquarters are in Schaumburg, Illinois. How does that make it German?

I don't know about the Illinois part, but that Schaumburg thing surely sounds German.

Re:Well then.

[nutshell42]

Siemens is German

Re:Well then.

[Lars T.]

And they want to close their cell phone production.

Re:Well then.

[Lars T.]

The problem is: the cell phone providers in Europe also want people to pay mucho dinero to download ringtones to their phones (and even more for music) - to them, not Apple. And many Europeans also can't wait to enter any subscription if they get the phone for just $1.

Things in Europe are different, but in the end they are the same.

New Annoying Ring Tones

[[cx]]

Now instead of hearing a crappy sounding ring tone you can hear the most annoying 50 cent song in CLEAR digital quality.

Re:New Annoying Ring Tones

[Wesley Felter]

Can you hear my ring tone now? Good.

Re:New Annoying Ring Tones

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you hear my Glock cocking now? Good.

;)

Next time I see...

[StimpyPimp]

A person walking down the street with some white ear plugs, talking to themselves, about the mac cult taking over the world... or some such, I will assume they are just on the phone.

Ring Tones are the problem here!

[SteveXE]

The problem isnt the feature rich phone, the problem is carriers have some how got people to pay $1-4 for STUPID RINGTONES!!!! Itunes charges me $1 for a song whether its 1 min or 10 min, but a 3 second repeating ringtone costs me $2 or a 12 kbps 30 seconds clip of a song cost me $4...wtf is all I can say.

The phone companies wont let people do what we want with our phones until we stop letting them rape our wallets! $1.50 for a 32x32 pixel background image! Why cant i just send myself a custom made BG for free? Easy because stupid people pay, and they keep paying.

Change wont take long, if we all stopped buying ringtones and bullshit for our phones then change would happen pretty quick, its a broken buisness model made to screw the customers out of even more money, dont fall for it!

Re:Ring Tones are the problem here!

[SteveXE]

I have a Motorolla i170, not a bad phone not a great phone, but im not rich. Maybe you can afford to spend $100-$200 on a phone but I really cant. This is basic technology im talking about, you got it, but why isnt it in every phone or at least the basics of it like tranfers pictures and sounds!?

Re:Ring Tones are the problem here!

[rynthetyn]

I don't buy background images, I just transfer pics that I want to my phone with a transfer cable. Right now, I have a lovely picture of me with the Stanley Cup which I look at every time I make a call.

Re:Ring Tones are the problem here!

[mrchaotica]

I understand what you're saying and I sympathize, but remember that pictures and (loadable) sounds aren't "the basics." Making calls and maybe seeing the number you just typed and the battery life left are the basics.

Now, if only I could find a modern phone that really offered "just the basics..."

Re:Ring Tones are the problem here!

[DoorFrame]

Broken business model seems to be the most popular phrase on Slashdot. It doesn't seem broken to me, tons of people use it and they're making buckets of money. It's more like a business model that you (and I) don't like. That's not broken, it's just annoying.

Re:Ring Tones are the problem here!

[Maestro4k]

Change wont take long, if we all stopped buying ringtones and bullshit for our phones then change would happen pretty quick, its a broken buisness model made to screw the customers out of even more money, dont fall for it!

• It'll likely take longer than you think unfortunately. Look at the Inkjet Printer market/business model. It's another idiotic business plan (sell the printers for a loss, screw them on the ink!) yet it's still around even though most consumers have caught on to it.

• They're adapted some, now they often don't include full cartridges with the printers because the general public figured out it was cheaper to throw away their printer and buy a new one than to replace the ink in it. (Which just shows how greedy they're being on the ink cartridges, if they were a little more reasonable people wouldn't have picked up on this as quickly. Many low-end model printers still cost less than HALF the cost of replacement ink cartridges even today.)

  Faced with growing consumer awareness of their scheme, and rejection of it as well, what did the printer manufacturers do? Tried to force lock-in by sticking chips and other useless doodads in the cartridges. Lexmark even went so far as to sue a company making chips to allow companies to produce generic cartridges for Lexmark printers -- using the DMCA no less. Luckily it seems the courts haven't approved of Lexmark's little scheme, basically saying that if the technology was put there only to force consumer lock-in it wasn't protected under the DMCA.

  That was fairly recent and Lexmark's sure to appeal (if they haven't already) so it'll be a while before it settles down, but have we really seen any change in the printer companies' business model?

  The same thing will happen here, even with consumer backlash, the phone companies will insist on their stupid business model and savvy customers will find ways around it or be forced to live with it. Hell it took the courts to stop us from being forced to let the telcos own all our inside wiring and phones years ago, it very well may take something similar to change the wireless company's business models.

  Ultimately businesses have stopped listening to their customers. Even falling sales are not attributed to unhappy customers but to anything else that can be blamed -- piracy, hackers, the weather, little green men, you name it, just not unhappy customers.

DRM-enabled?

[LokieLizzy]

Perhaps you'll only be able to talk with other iPhones, and not with real phones, you know, so you'll be able to communicate with the hippest trendwhores...err...hipsters.

Yeah. Hipsters. That's what I meant.

The real reason the iPodPhone should be droppped..

[Trillan]

...is that nobody cares. Honestly, who's in the market for one of these phones? Phones have a short enough battery life.

Everyone's excited now, but wait until it ships.

RTFA

[dustmite]

Major carriers are blocking the phone's entry because they want to be able to force users to pay them money to do something as basic as copy songs onto the phone/player. These are economic/strategic obstacles not technical obstacles.

Re:RTFA

[Golias]

The thing is, you can now change phone providers without giving up your phone number (mine ends with four consecutive nines, so it's a pretty sweet one to have).

If Apple and Motorola release a phone/iPod that I really, really want, and only do business with one provider who agrees not to tack on a bunch of useless lock-down to the services, I will simply buy the phone and switch to that provider. Hell, I dropped Sprint in favor of T-Mobile just out of being pissed off about lousy service.

Sure, some people have locked themselves into multi-year contracts, but most people can change services fairly soon.

Verizon and Cingular might be saying they won't support something like this right now, but if they start looking at losing an endless stream of customers over it, they are bound to change their tune.

Inevitable result of iPod Phone.

[AtariAmarok]

ring ring ring
Mabel: "Henry!"
Henry: "What, dear?
Mabel: "It's one of those calls again.
Henry: "What calls, dear?"
Mabel: "Every 20 minutes or so, the phone rings and I pick it up and I hear some of that damn rock music"

Meanwhile, somewhere 5 states away, Jason is grooving down the streets, buds in ears, with one hand on the iPod phone as he hits the controls and surfs through his really impressive Led Zep collection. Every once in a while, he presses a button and the song does not change. No idea why.

Re:Inevitable result of iPod Phone.

[Gadgetfreak]

My girlfriend's Motorola already does that. Sometimes when I call her, the phone keeps ringing even after she answers it. So all I hear is her ring tone... Super Mario Brothers theme... playing through the phone. I have to hang up and call back.

Re:Inevitable result of iPod Phone.

[WinterSolstice]

Led Zepplin?

You need to get out more. I doubt that the crowd that still listens to Led Zepplin has much of an overlap with the iPod crowd. More like 'Blink 182', or 'Eminem' or something. Maybe some sort of Jazz if you're lucky :)

-WS

Re:Why?!

[jollyrog]

Carrying around a cell phone in my pocket is annoying enough, but having to lug another device is why I haven't bought an MP3 player or PDA.

Being a student at the University, I move around a lot during the day between libraries, classes, and gyms, and having an mp3 player during the day would be great, but I've already got my phone in one pocket, keys in the other, and wallet in the back.

Microsoft loves branding.

[AtariAmarok]

"Apple, and to a large extent Microsoft too, have very strong brands. They love branding"

The problem is, with Microsoft branding, the experience is a lot like what a cow feels at the end of the roundup. "Yeeha! Dogies. Stand still so we can brand you with the MS of the Billygates Ranch. The brandin' irons are heatin' up."

Why not add a cell phone service charge?

[jkeyes]

The Wireless services are being stupid on this. They could just add a 'iTunes Phone Access Fee' that's $5.00 to everyone who gets the phone. Then no matter how many songs they add they get their $5.00 and I think that if meant you got the phone for free most people who read the terms after they sign wouldn't care or would just want the shiny new phone.

Re:Why not add a cell phone service charge?

[kidgenius]

Yeah, but see all the "cool" kids change their ringtones at least once a month. These providers would have made pretty much their first two months of money, but after that, they aren't getting their $3/tone anymore.

Re:Why not add a cell phone service charge?

[KingJoshi]

This may be a little off-topic, but it's something I still don't get.

Why do so many on Slashdot complain about Napster To Go pricing and service? Someone suggests $5/month for just capability to play songs they already own and which the technology is there, but the service providers are being greedy and people think it's a good idea?! After you stop paying the $5 a month, you can't use your own phone to transfer music anymore? That's dumber than the DRM on Napster.

T-Mobile or some provider should take up the opportunity and join with Motorola and Apple. Let Cingular and Verizon complain or add their own charges of $5/month. See where the customers go.

People keep talking about a "free market" in the US. But you have giant corporations and organizations like RIAA, MPAA and here the celluar phone companies that have so much control over the market. Saddest thing is, people vote with their dollars to help reinforce such a system...

Re:Why not add a cell phone service charge?

[khrtt]

They could just add a 'iTunes Phone Access Fee'

That's why they want it with no computer connection, so you'd have to use their paid service to get the songs into the phone. They are being too greedy. They's do better if they allowed over-the-air iTunes for a fee, in addition to being able to load songs in. At least some people would pay for getting new songs while afk.

Re:Why not add a cell phone service charge?

[Luscious868]

The Wireless services are being stupid on this. They could just add a 'iTunes Phone Access Fee' that's $5.00 to everyone who gets the phone. Then no matter how many songs they add they get their $5.00 and I think that if meant you got the phone for free most people who read the terms after they sign wouldn't care or would just want the shiny new phone.

I think your missing the point. The wireless carries see themselves as eventual competition to Apple. They see a world where the cell phone would replace the iPod and other mp3 players and become a sort of digital jukebox. You would download tracks from the carriers via their own online store. You could use them as ring tones or plug in some headphones and listen to your collection. Then you'd come home at night, place your phone in a craddle, music you've purchased would play through your stero.

Now back to reality. Given the "quality" of most of the phones I've had and of the different cell phone services I've used, I can tell you right now that the wireless providers pipe dream is never going to happen. I've never had a cell phone that approaches the eligance or ease of use of my iPod, and I've never come across jukebox software anywhere as cool and easy to use as iTunes. If you're cell phone were to become a digital jukebox as the wireless companies envision, you'd need good desktop software to manage your library, make playlists, etc and the phone itself would have to have a sleak enough interface to allow you to navigate through all of your tracks.

The wireless companies are fooling themselves if they think that they they will be able to come up with a device as slick as the iPod, along with an online store and music management software as slick as the iTMS / iTunes combination anytime soon. Purchasing a ring tone via Verizon's service is a nightmare. There's no selection, it takes forever to find what you're looking for and to preview and/or download it, and it's $2 for an actual clip and $1 for the MIDI version. It's a joke.

I do believe, however, that a cell phone could make a nice, flash like mp3 player that is usuable when you don't have your hard drive based player with you, but when I want to have all of my music with me, it's going to be an iPod for me from now and into the forseeable future.

I trust wireless companies to produce quality products and services about as much as I trust Micheal Jackson to keep his hands off of a 10 year boy sleeping with him in his bed at Neverland Ranch. That is to say, I don't trust them at all.

I can tell you this, the first wireless provider to support an uncrippled version of this new iPhone will be getting my business. I'm interested in a product like the iPhone that I could use to listen to music when I don't have my iPod with me, but I don't trust any of the wireless carries themselves to come up with a better alternative.

Re:This is why US is waaay behind in cellular tech

[ezthrust]

You don't have to go to India to get a fair deal. I am on Fido in Canada using a SE T610 I got for $25. It has the most recent firmware, BT is active, I can use .midi files that I make myself as ringtones. Text messages 10 cents, Picture 25 cents. Data, 3 cents a KB (I don't have a plan for that)

Am I happy with my carrier?
Damn straight!

Ubiquitous computing

[Valthezeh]

I love this idea. I hope things keep going in this direction, because I like the idea of my phone doing everything. Acting as my TV remote, my car door opener, my camera, my ipod, my palm pilot, my mobile stock/email/sports scores report... As well as the ability to interface with other technology to keep me updated on things like whether my oven is on...

I read a few weeks ago about a cell phone company in Japan working on this, and despite my reservations due to privacy concerns, I really can't wait until this kind of technology becomes widely available.

So?

[Locke2005]

I've got a Samsung Uproar cell phone that plays MP3's which is several years old (and which I don't even use any more). Seems to me combining a cell phone and MP3 player isn't exactly a novel idea... but wait, it's Apple, so that makes it special?!?

Re:So?

[Admiral Llama]

I had one of those. The documentation that came with the USB drivers stated that you weren't supposed to do anything on the computer while it was transferring files. Even then, the thing would BSOD half the time anyway. Opening notepad while moving songs to the phone was a guaranteed blue screen.

And no, there was no updated version of the software that you could get.

Re:So?

[jaysones]

There were mp3 players before the iPod too, but none as successful.

Motorola should have known this

[gjh]

It was idiotic even trying to launch this thing in the USA. Carriers have a strange-hold over this market. Nokia has a range over over 100 handsets - you can buy about 6 of these on US carrier contracts, not including decent phones with WLAN and Bluetooth.

I cannot understand why Apple is sodding around with Motorola on this. They should have partnered with Nokia.

As an aside, Apple should also partner with Shazam. The best thing that an iPod/phone combo could do is recognize music from an online database and buy it for you.

Re:Motorola should have known this

[serfx]

Well aside from the technical standpoint that apple and motorola have been working togeather for years. The whole other reason to partner with them over _ANY_ other celular phone maker is that much like Apple, Motorola makes the sexiest damn cell phones around. So why not combine that with the sexiest mp3 player in town?
Think from a design/marketing point of view.
I know you've been thinking about Motorola's M3 razor or whatever that damn thing i don't need but severly want is.

Re:Motorola should have known this

[Phleg]

I cannot understand why Apple is sodding around with Motorola on this. They should have partnered with Nokia.

I couldn't agree more. My Nokia ended up breaking after about four years, and I ended up getting a Motorola. I've regretted every minute of it. Whereas Nokia seems to have a smiliar mindset to that of Apple (a focus on usability), my Motorola is the most unusable piece of crap I've ever had the displeasure of dealing with.

I can store something like five minutes of voice on the cell phone, but I'll be damned if it runs out of space with twenty text messages. You can't turn the volume off without making more noise. Even when the volume is off, some buttons still make noise (and are conveniently on the outside of the phone, so it can beep in your pocket) making the vibrate feature nearly useless. The "Accept" and "Cancel" buttons are on different sides at different times. The dial and hangup buttons are permanently juxtaposed. The "Memory Meter" shows you a representation of how much memory is left on the phone, but you have no way of telling whether or not a full bar means it's full of space or filled up. Assigning a one-touch dial number to contacts is a pain in the ass. The power connector features two microscopic hooks which are so easy to break it's unbelievable. The phone takes five minutes after "booting" before I can place a call, view my contact list, check messages, etc. Switching the phone to "Silent" or "Vibrate" does not necessarily turn the volume off.

I swear to god if I ever meet the man who designed this worthless piece of shit, I am going to bludgeon him with a tractor.

Re:Motorola should have known this

[Queer Boy]

I cannot understand why Apple is sodding around with Motorola on this.

Apple has had a partnership with Motorolla for over 20 years on the Macintosh. Right now it looks like they're going to be getting their chips from IBM for the foreseeable future, so they have to do something to stay good business partners with Motorolla in case Motorolla comes up with something good again (like they did with Altivec). Nokia is a competitor to Motorolla. It is a BAD idea to partner with your partner's competitor.

That's why.

Re:Motorola should have known this

[gjh]

Nicely put.

Nokia's biggest mistake in the US market was apparently to stand for so long by its belief that flip-phones are less usable, break more easily, can't show caller info as effectively and so on.

Oh gee though - who would have reckoned on the US consumer wanting to look like someone out of Star Trek?

Truly, Nokia has the usability advantage. But Finland is a long way from California.

Some of the design advantage Apple has is from being a minority for so long. It makes Apple cool. Nokia is far away the market leader outside the US and Japan, so it doesn't get minority cachet. But the fact that Motorola has ended up with the 'cool' factor in the US is laughable. Compare it to MP3 players... it reminds you a lot more of the Zen than the iPod.

Re:Motorola should have known this

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I cannot understand why Apple is sodding around with Motorola on this.

Guilt for dumping their sorry ass when they couldn't meet milestones on the G4 / G5 / G6 roadmap?

I agree. Motorola was the leading chip technology on Apple for a very long time, but hasn't been for a good while now. It's kind of funny if you think about it:

headline:

MOTOROLA BLOWS ANOTHER DEADLINE FOR APPLE

Just like old times, innit?

RS

Re:Motorola should have known this

[dj245]

I'm sorry to hear that. I think only the new ones are crap. I've got a V120 thats a couple of years old. I've thought of getting a new phone, but the new Nokias are all looking like they're designed by an idiot who likes teeny teeny batteries and big color screens, and the Motorolas don't come free with plans around here any more. I did drop it in the some salty slush once and the battery terminals got green and corroded and the phone didn't work at all, but a little rubbing alcohol later and it was back in action.

With no "basic phone" from Nokia that has a big battery and a efficient screen, I suppose I'll keep this old thing for a while more.

Re:Motorola should have known this

[myov]

Motorola no longer makes CPUs. The semiconductor group has been spun off into Freescale (any my usual joke about now needing to actually do something)

Mot really has nothing new to offer Apple. In fact, they've screwed Apple so many times with CPU development I'm suprized Apple still even talks to them.

Re:Motorola should have known this

[innerlimit]

Maybe they turned to Motorola because of their history together? (Motorola used to produce processors for Apple, now it's all IBM. IIRC)

Re:Motorola should have known this

[irote]

No, there's the Nokia 1100. Endless battery life (almost a week), small but very clear b&w screen, great reception, small and light and even a built in LED flashlight (which is not a gimmick, but actually very useful). Two hours' charging has you going for days. It even looks good (classy shades of grey). A design classic.

Re:Motorola should have known this

[khrtt]

Motorola makes the sexiest damn cell phones around.

WHAT? WHAT? I just got a motorola phone; it was the only cheap phone with a speakerphone that they had. The speaker doesn't work right, and the phone drops calls. In other words, it's a piece of garbage. It's also bigger than all the other phones I've ever had. I should've gone for Samsung...

Oh, and the Razor thing - have you even seen it?
It just looks like razor in pictures. In reall life, it's more like a rather large brick. And if you're willing to drag around a big gadget, you could get something with a lot more functionality in it, like a palm or a pocketpc.

Re:Motorola should have known this

[Travis Fisher]

I go off on similar rants about the (utter lack of) usability of my current Samsung phone. I don't know if I'd go as far as a tractor, but I'd certainly like to bludgeon that designer with a clue-by-four. On the other hand, the Motorola I had one phone generation ago was fairly well designed. It didn't have much for fancy features, but it was very easy to use for making calls, which is what I wanted it for anyway (duh)...

In general, it seems that the because of the way everything is bundled together there is very little market pressure to make the phones more usable. This is an area where the technology will really take off when and if the marketplace is much more open. The US with its monopoly-dominated market will probably keep way behind the more competitive open-market places like Hong Kong!

Re:Motorola should have known this

[khrtt]

You must have an older model. The recent ones are pretty decent. I have a v180, and can't complain of usability problems...

Well, now that I think of it, they did swap the Send and End buttons compared to nokia. Then, again, my sony-ericsson didn't have Send or End buttons whatsoever.

Another thing, the v180 has a light sensor that tells it whether to turn the keypad light on (nice touch), but the algorithm that runs the sensor is f*cked up, so the keypad flashes every time you press a key, which is kinda stupid.

And, you can't input multiple letters when you search the phone book (you can on Nokias, but not on sony-ericsson).

And, you can't use number keys to make menu selections.

That's all. Only 4 small complaints, and nothing as gross as you describe.

Re:Motorola should have known this

[khrtt]

I am going to bludgeon him with a tractor.

Hmm.. Interesting idea.. How the heck do you bludgeon someone with a tractor???

Re:Motorola should have known this

[fiddlesticks]

Moto make rubbish phones that look good in ads and on billboards but break quickly or have way, way too many useless features so doing anything with them is difficult.

nowhere with a real cellphone economy goes near them

nokia all the way, baby

Re:Motorola should have known this

[jaysones]

You hit them over the head with it!

:D

Re:Motorola should have known this

[eison]

Nope.

I have a brand-new to-of-the-line "RAZR" v300.
You can't turn off the volume without it making noise.
You can't turn off the volume without hitting multiple different keys repeatedly - push one button, then hit another 4 or 5 times while watching a display and listening to it beep.
You can turn on the volume by pushing buttons on the outside of the phone, so it can get turned on in your pocket while on silent.
To turn the phone itself on, you hold down the big red 'end call' key for 5 seconds.
Switching from ring level 1 to silent then back to ringer puts it back to default ring level - normally 5 or 6.
An external button turns on the camera even when the flip is closed. This is both evil and dangerous.
In a list of recent callers, the most recent caller is listed as #10.

etc. etc.

In short, I just have a feeling that whoever made this thing forgot it was supposed to be a phone.

Re:Motorola should have known this

[sepreece]

I agree, the volume-changing is still not what it should be. Note, however, that you can use shortcuts to set up 2-click changes to a particular style (like Loud or Vibrate).

The "power-off by holding END" model is the standard in large parts of the world.

The external button for the camera is meant to leverage the fact that you can use the external display as a viewfinder. The sidekeys do need something like the keypad lock that candybar phones have.

In the list of most-recent callers, the most-recent SHOULD have the highest number, so you know how many are under it in the list. Every caller ID box I've had does it that way.

Re:Motorola should have known this

[sepreece]

In fairness, Motorola phones always had the SEND on the right and the END on the left, and Motorola has been building cell phones longer than anybody. It's Nokia that made the gratuitous change from industry standard.

However, Motorola started switching product lines to the Red-on-the-right model a while ago and it will probably be universal, eventually.

Switching it isn't as easy as changing the key labels - you want the softkey usage to match the hardkeys, so you also have get those reversed so that "positive" is on the left. Some of Motorola's products are caught-in-the-middle on that transition and appear inconsistent.

Numbers on menu entries are a mixed blessing - they take up screen space (a bigger deal a few years ago than now, admittedly) and users end up learning them as shortcuts, which means you can't have dynamic menus that drop inapplicable operations.

Re:Motorola should have known this

[VGPowerlord]

I cannot understand why Apple is sodding around with Motorola on this. They should have partnered with Nokia.

I imagine that Apple did that because they used to have a business relationship with Motorola. Prior to the introduction of the PowerPC architecture, Macintoshes used Motorola's 68k line of processors.

Re:Motorola should have known this

[eison]

Power off, End, makes sense. But power on? Holding down the green start-call button doesn't power up. It's end call for both. I had to read the manual to turn my phone on the first time.

Shortcuts? I have only read half of the manual, but news to me. Will continue digging. Still, muting a cell phone shouldn't be a power use feature.

External viewfinder display is on the same side as camera lens. Thus, not useful for taking pictures other than of yourself. I maintain my 'evil' opinion.

Most recent list always lists 10. Caller #10 is the guy who just called you.

I continue to wonder if the designers ever used the thing.

My old Nokia, while lame and ugly by today's standards, at least was a really solid comprehensible phone. I could quickly quietly make it be quiet - basic standard all cell phones should meet, unless they are busy being web browsers and calendars and cameras too and forget that they are phones.

Re:Motorola should have known this

[khrtt]

The v180 does have dynamic menu, but only the top-level menu is dynamic. The numbers on sub-menus would be really useful. The way they have it, the number keys do nothing at all in submenus, and that's silly.

Also, this ust be one of those phones you mention as caught-in-the-middle on that transition, as it has send key on the left, yet the "positive" softkey is on the right. This is too subtle to be annoying, though.

Don't release it untill it's ready for sale.

[Aqua OS X]

It depends on the product. In this case, I think Apple is right. Motorola doesn't have much experience with releasing consumer products that people lust for... Apple does.

If you announce an iTunes / Motorola Cellphone before it is ready to hit the market, you adversely affect current sales of iPods and Moto phones. People like to have the next best thing, and they hate buying something that's outdated in a month. Consumers will usually hold off on purchasing a new device if they can get a cooler device in a few months / weeks.

This is precisely why Apple usually announces hardware and sells it the very same day. If they don't do that, they have to liquidate a load of outdated hardware. Consumers won't buy a 15 gig iPod if they know a 20 gig with more features will be on sale for the same price next month.

The only time Apple doesn't do this is when they have a future product that doesn't directly compete against what they are currently selling.

Apple has one of the best inventory records in the tech industry. Motorola should listen them.

Re:Don't release it untill it's ready for sale.

[teknokracy]

Consumers won't buy a 15 gig iPod if they know a 20 gig with more features will be on sale for the same price next month.

Well, this happens ALL the time, and i'd rather see the newer model for $1.00 more expensive and with more features, than seeing the new model at the same price with more features. Of course, one of the features added to the 4G iPods was later (at least 9 months) added to 3G iPods. (The feature i speak of is the "Shuffle" option in the menu.)

However, you do have a point. I need a new iPod and a new Cell, and now that I have found out Apple and Mot are designing a new phonepod thing, I'm holding off buying a Razr and a Shuffle! If it turns out to be a crap device (which IS possible), then I will still have the other two separate devices to fall back on to :D

Re:Don't release it untill it's ready for sale.

[Kiryat Malachi]

Motorola doesn't have much experience with releasing consumer products that people lust for...

I don't know. They did pretty well with car radios, televisions, and then later on the cell phone (a Motorola invention), then the StarTAC, and now the Razr.

Apple does alright too, but Motorola has a pretty good track record with making stuff people want to buy.

Also, what kind of crack are you smoking?

This is precisely why Apple usually announces hardware and sells it the very same day.

Apple is infamous for announcing a product they know they won't be selling/shipping for months.

Re:Don't release it untill it's ready for sale.

[nolife]

Wether or not anyone has lust over Motorolas products or not, they produce and sell cutting edge products that just about everyone in the world with electricity uses and have been for many many years. Their sales and products have nothing to do with lust for a brand name or a single product. Even with no lust, the products they make still sell in large quantities. Lust is not required for them to make a sale. IMHO, they are in a completely different business that does not require lust like the market that Apple is in. Adopting Apples practices is not required for them to sell products. That was my point.

Re:Don't release it untill it's ready for sale.

[SethJohnson]

Apple has had ONE general consumer hit product, the iPod line.

The iMac sold more units than any other single PC model. The newer versions continue to sell in huge numbers. Sounds like something of a consumer hit if you ask me.

Re:Don't release it untill it's ready for sale.

[Aqua OS X]

Please. You're missing the point.

Moto has sold a LOT of consumer products and they have been in business a lot longer then Apple, but their product releases are very very different.

Motorola doesn't have hundreds of fanboy websites and BBS' eagerly anticipating product releases and updates. Apple does, and they've learned how to deal with this.

With the exception of the Motorola Razor and their iTunes phone, consumer don't usually stop buying current Motorola products while anticipating upcoming products. Motorola is accustom to announcing a new products early with no repercussions to their ability to clear remaining inventory of old products. This is not the case for Apple.

Re:Don't release it untill it's ready for sale.

[Aqua OS X]

"Apple does alright too, but Motorola has a pretty good track record with making stuff people want to buy."

Moto can usually get away with announcing a product a 2 months early... people still buy their current stuff. If Apple did this, they'd loose a lot of money.

"Apple is infamous for announcing a product they know they won't be selling/shipping for months."

As I've said, it depends on the product.

If it is a revision to a current product line, they EOL (end of life) the current product line, wait for inventory to drop, announce the new product and have it in the store within a few days.

If it is a new product, they usually announce it when it is nearly ready and give you the option to pre-order it.

These are generalizatios, but most of Apple's hardware releases follow these guidelines. All in all, the goal is to diminish the inventory of hardware products that will become obsolete.

Re:FUCK YOU APPLEDOT

[yuriismaster]

It's because the submitter (chadwick) copied the first few sentences from the BuisnessWeek Article who posts stock symbols next to referenced companies as their readership includes buisnessmen.

It is kinda sad the editors didn't take the stock symbol out, but its sadder the submitter didn't.

Re:Why?!

[rgmoore]

That's why so many techies have started wearing utility belts. They give you a lot of space to hang all your various gadgets.

Hey Mods: The TRUTH is NOT flamebait!

[mrchaotica]

Why are we putting up with this kind of thing in here in the US, anyway? I mean I'm not, personally -- I don't own a cellphone. But that's because there's no way in hell I'd pay someone to cripple the device for me, just to force me to pay them more money! Why are there so many sheeple here to let them get away with it?

Re:Hey Mods: The TRUTH is NOT flamebait!

[chris234]

Mainly because we want cheap phones, so we let the providers have more control over them and subsidize them.

Re:Hey Mods: The TRUTH is NOT flamebait!

[NanoGator]

"Why are we putting up with this kind of thing in here in the US, anyway?"

It's a non-issue for most people out there, that's why. Geeks are not in the majority when it comes to buying cell phones.

Re:Hey Mods: The TRUTH is NOT flamebait!

[mrchaotica]

So then my question (or rather, general rant) becomes "why are the normal people so apathetic?"

Sigh.

Re:Hey Mods: The TRUTH is NOT flamebait!

[NanoGator]

"So then my question (or rather, general rant) becomes "why are the normal people so apathetic?"

Beause they don't care about midi ring tones?

Re:Hey Mods: The TRUTH is NOT flamebait!

[mrchaotica]

But, at least from what I've heard, they DO! Especially teenagers. The question is, why don't they care that they're being ripped off?

Re:Hey Mods: The TRUTH is NOT flamebait!

[andreyw]

Cheap? Not with Nextel. Better cough up some dough if you want a new model of another poorly and cheaply designed Motorola contraption.

Re:Hey Mods: The TRUTH is NOT flamebait!

[Buran]

Duh. Because mommy and daddy pay the phone bill for them, of course.

Re:Hey Mods: The TRUTH is NOT flamebait!

[NanoGator]

"The question is, why don't they care that they're being ripped off?"

Cos to a teenager, $2.50 isn't a lot of money?

Re:Hey Mods: The TRUTH is NOT flamebait!

[metlin]

Well because to most people (and that includes me) a cellphone is nothing more than a tool and an instrument.

I'm a student, and since I'm simply not grounded enough to have a landline, I have a cellphone. Helps me when I take weekends off and shift apartments and dorms every other semester.

Quite honestly, while all the features sound oh-so-cool and and wonderful, I do not honestly care - I have a very basic phone that lets me do ONE thing properly - TALK. Any phone with decent battery life, good signal reception and a clear channel is good enough. Often times, the base model does suffice and that's more than sufficient for me.

Hell, who cares? If I wanted to send images and stuff, I'd get a good enough PDA for that. A phone is primarily a communication device. Any fancy stuff merely eats up battery.

And oh, as someone who does a lot of outdoor stuff, I've come to realize that battery life is quite important, and more features just eat up more battery life real quickly.

So, to answer your question - the kind who pay to buy crippled stuff are mostly the dumb folks (and usually with cash to blow for spending just $2.50 per MMS or whatever) or the folks who want the latest cool thing (the Oooh! Lookie there! Shiny, shiny! My phone can do _this_! That makes me _so_ proud of my manhood). Very few have a genuine need to see a movie on their cellphone or have any use for any of the quintillion features that the phone may have.

What bloody difference does it make? It's a thing for talking, for cryin' out loud. Bah!

Re:Hey Mods: The TRUTH is NOT flamebait!

[Grishnakh]

As two other posters pointed out, they're not getting ripped off. Their parents are.

Have you noticed how in most families now, both parents are working long hours to pay for all their creature comforts: big house, big SUVs, etc.? Their teenagers' reckless spending habits are part of this (giving their kids lots of spending money also seems convenient to the parents because it keeps the kids distracted so the parents don't have to spend any time with them). The problem is the stupid parents haven't figured out that their lives would be better if the worked less, spent less on crap, and tried enjoying their lives instead.

Re:Hey Mods: The TRUTH is NOT flamebait!

[jargoone]

Every time there's a discussion about cell phone features, someone pipes in with this "if I don't need it no one does" crap. Let me clue you in a little bit. Just because you don't find any use for other features doesn't mean that they're not useful. For instance:

• I have a friend that takes pictures of his child every morning and sends them to his family. He wouldn't carry around a dedicated camera for this, and I assure you, his family enjoys getting the pictures.
  
• SMS is handy sometimes when you can't talk.
  
• A phone with bluetooth and a lightweight calendar application is a very handy. It eliminated my need for a PDA.
  
• Games are great for riding the subway, sitting in a doctors office waiting room, or sitting on the shitter.

I'm just scratching the surface. Maybe it's all about talking for you, but it's not for everyone. Some people do care, and it's got nothing to do with being proud of your manhood (whatever the hell that means). It's about making your life easier and better.

We need to change this

[HairyCanary]

I see nothing but dark clouds in the future of cell phones in America unless we take back control from the corporations. We must divorce the hardware from the service, just like we did for wired telephone service. You should be able to buy whatever phone YOU want, with whatever feature set YOU want, and connect to whatever carrier YOU want. Verizon in particular has already shown us exactly how they want to control us.

Re:We need to change this

[Quiet_Desperation]

Is it so bad? You can choose the carrier you want, and the phone pretty much comes free much of the time. My Nextel phone wound up giving me a net +$50 after rebates.

The one change I would like to see is the end of being locked into a service contract, or at least not one over three months.

Re:We need to change this

[jr87]

go to europe...heck go to canada...look at all the pretty phones...
come back to the USA...
and cry

seriously, the carriers in the US are what is keeping cellphone tech so fricken behind in the United States. We should not have phone lock-in. If Nokia makes phone A but cingular doesn't like a phone A feature (ex. make your own midi or something). Cingular should have to suck it. Instead Cingular forces Nokia to remove feature...
and thus the consumer loses again

Re:We need to change this

[SamDrake]

But but but ... you CAN already do that! At least with the GSM carriers, you can already buy any phone you want, from any source you want, stick in your SIM card, and away you go.

Of course - and this is the part you won't like - you'll have to pay full price for the phone. But that's fair - if Cingular doesn't like a particular phone then why should they pay more than half the price of it for you?

Darn - it would be convenient if this was a "big nasty corporation vs little guy" story. But it's just an "I don't want to pay for my own toys" story after all....

Re:We need to change this

[m3j00]

My carrier would not let me use my own phone. They required that I purchase a phone from them when I signed up.

Re:We need to change this

[SamDrake]

So take their free phone, and then move the SIM card into the phone you bought. Throw their phone in the trash. Big deal.

You ARE taking about a GSM carrier, right? That's what I was referring to in the original post. The non-GSM carriers have more lockin.

Re:We need to change this

[Quiet_Desperation]

Eh... I guess I don't care about pretty phones. I bought a basic Motorola with a black ruggedized case. Works fine. Makes calls.

Re:We need to change this

[mike.newton]

I had no idea things were that way in the US, in fact I can't imagine how they could be. I know it was like that back in the CDMA days, but now that everyone's going GSM, just take your SIM card and put it in whatever phone you want, provided it's unlocked. And that's a trivial matter these days.

I can see the carriers refusing to bundle the phones with contracts and whatnot, but if someone wants to buy it I can't imagine they could stop them from using it on their network. Why don't Apple/Motorola just release the phone, let people pay money for it (they will) and screw the phone companies!

uh, me for one.

[uncadonna]

From the linked article; "Who wants the $500 iPod phone when you could buy a phone and an iPod for that much?" says analyst Tole Hart of researcher Gartner.

Does anybody else not understand the question? Is this guy saying I'd rather carry two gizmos than one because, I'd have, like, more stuff?

Re:uh, me for one.

[ErikZ]

Yeah, I was thinking "What does this guy research? Climate change?".

Ever hear of a "Smart Phone" Mr Hart? It's where they combine a phone, and a PDA and charge the customer 500$ for it.

I'm am truely astonished at how some people can keep their jobs.

Re:uh, me for one.

[prockcore]

Is this guy saying I'd rather carry two gizmos than one because, I'd have, like, more stuff?

He's saying that it'd be better to buy two gizmos because when you're ready to buy a new phone (which the average person does every 2 years), you won't have to buy a new mp3 player.

I can see some benefits of tying a phone to an mp3 player (like having the mp3 player mute when a call comes in), but the fact is, the purchasing cycles of a cell phone and an mp3 player do *not* match up. Most people get a new phone every other year. Your ipod should last a lot longer than that.

Re:uh, me for one.

[silicon not in the v]

Also, if you drop [expensive consumer gadget] and it breaks, how much of a loss do you want associated with that?

Re:uh, me for one.

[rzebram]

Rarely are two products combined like that without mucking one of them up. Besides, independent devices can be replaced at different times, are specialized for what they do, and the batteries last longer.

Re:FUCK YOU APPLEDOT

[mesach]

The editors also do not write the submissions, and the submitter in this case doesn't either, he just copied and pasted the first 2 paragraphs of the article.

it's flash based storage

[johnpaul191]

some info on the phone did leak out, including that it was flash based. it's not huge capacity or anything. they showed it to the press a day or two before the cancelled release and i guess from there some info came out about how many songs it can hold and whatnot. i don't remember the capacity, because they always talk about it in terms of number of songs (grr) and not MBs.

i don't think it's iPod + phone as much as a phone with a built in flash drive and some slimmed down version of the iPod's software. it has some of the iPod's interface as well as the ability to play iTMS songs... and it can sync with iTunes.

Re:FUCK YOU APPLEDOT

[black mariah]

So exactly how stupid do you have to be to not notice that this is in the APPLE section? You know, the place where APPLE stuff is talked about?

might be marketing

[fermion]

The reports on this seem to make it a marketing issue. I am wondering if there is some conflict over how this device will generate profit.

A key issue might be how the music is distributed. Maybe Apple just wants to continue having users download the songs via the computer. Perhaps the phone companies want the ability to download songs via the phone as well, to increase airtime charges. I think the telcos have been trying to push these relitively premium services. Maybe $10 additioanl to have the ability to download songs.

Of course if songs are bought through the phone and computer, this leads to which devices the songs can be used on. If the phones are harddrive based this decision might be very important. If flash based, then maybe not so much.

In any case, I would still like to see a phone the size and form of a standard iPod with Bluetooth headset and all data entry done via a computer. Since I am sure this is not on the way, I probably will just get a Razr.

Re:Why?!

[thparker]

Carrying around a cell phone in my pocket is annoying enough, but having to lug another device is why I haven't bought an MP3 player or PDA.

"Lug" around another device? Isn't that a little over the top? You make it sound like we're talking about carrying a spare boat anchor.

Being a student at the University, I move around a lot during the day between libraries, classes, and gyms, and having an mp3 player during the day would be great, but I've already got my phone in one pocket, keys in the other, and wallet in the back.

You could try one of these innovative new products that have come on the market. They take fabric or animal hide and sew it together, creating a kind of giant pocket! Often, these pockets are sometimes further divided, so you can kind of organize things. Marketing wizards have come up with catchy names for these things like "satchel" or "backpack". Check them out -- they're kind of cool, and might even be useful to carry books between all those libraries and classes you're heading to.

Exclusive Slashdot Interview, take 2.

[LokieLizzy]

Steve Jobs continues to revolutionize the modern world, combining the marvels of both the telecommunications industry and that of the digital music revolution.

SJ: It will change the iPod as we know it.

/.: But you've already got the iPod, the iPod mini, the iPod photo...isn't that enough?

SJ: It is never enough.

/.: But...

SJ: Hold on a sec...(whips small white device out of pocket, attaches 103-key USB keyboard ). It's the latest device in the iPod family.

/.: What is it? A Powerbook with a 64-bit processor?

SJ: No.

/.: An iPod with a user-replaceable battery?

SJ: (Scoffs). No.

/.: What *is* it???

SJ: The iPlog. A device to revolutionize blogging as we know it.

/.: Apple is truly the pinnacle of innovation.

Re:Exclusive Slashdot Interview, take 2.

[johnlittledotorg]

You'd need a crowbar to get some of these folks off Jobs' iJock

Re:Exclusive Slashdot Interview, take 2.

[Ohreally_factor]

You are on a roll!

I disagree, it's both a troll and flamebait. But it's mostly funny, which is the most important. Keep up the good work!

Motorola

[diggory]

I've seen a lot of mobile phones - I'm in the UK - and they've been prevalent for over a decade now. One of the things that amazes me about them is this: 1 - Motorola can't make good ones. 2 - That doesn't seem to stop people buying Motorola phones. I always warn people not to buy Motorola - they are always buggy and frequently crash completely (i.e. lock-up and require rebooting.) Yet they always buy them, and regret it a few months down the line. I think it has something to do with the form-factor - people couldn't get enough of the star-tac and that was awful. I'm not surprised that they're having problems with the phone - I bet it'll be a dog once it's released as well.

downloading music on cellphone

[krunk4ever]

DIAL MY JUKEBOX. One way would be for U.S. carriers to follow the model that has been established in Europe. There, carriers such as Vodafone (VOD ), Orange, and O2 have set up their own digital-music stores, letting customers download music tracks over the cellular network to their phones. Carriers get a slice of the $2.80 customers pay per song. Wireless players also could offer customers subscription services, with access to thousands of songs for a flat monthly fee of $15 or $20. I was just thinking, how often have you had times when you're trying to remember a song or talk about a song among friends and told them you've gotta listen to this. Wouldn't it just be great that you can online to a music store, browse and download it to listen or play it for your friends?

So Buy a Carrier

[ReadParse]

It seems their biggest problem is getting a wireless carrier to support it. So how soon until Steve Jobs just buys a wireless carrier? That's an impulse buy, right? :)

RP

Last time I checked...

[DaleBob]

from the BusinessWeek article:

When customers buy songs from Apple's iTunes music store, they pay 99 a tune. But Apple only gets about 4 of that, after paying the record company and others, says researcher Strategy Analytics. Apple says iTunes is only a breakeven business.

Seems like the 39 cent margin estimate may be off by an order of magnitude.

Re:This is why US is waaay behind in cellular tech

[kidgenius]

What I'm trying to figure out is why one of these European or Asian cellular providers doesn't come over here and start releasing these awesome phones and wonderful service. Think of all the people that would flock to these companies to get cheap ring tones, cheap text messages, and the coolest phones ever. I imagine that in part it is the infrastructure, the fact they don't have any cell towers. I thought that the providers "shared" their towers with each other....for a fee of course. Beyond that, anything else that prevents them from coming over here?

Re:Why?!

[mzwaterski]

You want to trade your phone up, but you don't want new features? And...why do you care if I want a phone that has an mp3 player. If you really need a reason, here it is:

I already carry my cell phone with me, it would be nice if I didn't have to carry a second device but had the ability to listen to mp3's when I felt like it. Is that really so difficult to fathom? Lets move on.

this is good.

[recharged95]

It's actually good this will never come about when Sony, Nokia, and DoMoCo are releasing phones with better than ipod shuffle capabilities (2GB) come this fall.

And with Bluetooth or WiFi, just sync your tunes from your desktop. There only needs to be one repository for your music, not many--and having iTunes on a phone seems a bit self defeating in that scenario. As for downloading, I rather download at home--when I'm not on the go. When I'm 'mobile' I rather be listening to my tunes than buying, surfing for tunes, etc... And a watered down iTunes is just another QT player. Though only having 48MB, I like the player capability on my Sony Ericsson for my MP3s, the i/f is simple, bluetooth syncing is simple and it just does the job--and I still have 1 week battery life! Explains why Sony's shifting away from the PDA and ipod biz (those sales was a factor too).

Re:this is good.

[fuzzdawg]

Might help if you RTFA.

Everyone wants to put music on their phone. Problem is, the carriers want to charge you to put it on your phone.

From the article:
SKIMPY PROFITS. Verizon, Cingular, and other wireless operators want customers to pay to put music on phones. They think getting a full song should be like getting a ring tone, snippets for which customers now pay from 99 to $3. The carriers have no interest in conceding the booming digital-music market to the tech players. "When carriers see this future, Apple is front and center," says Andrew Cole, head of the wireless practice at consultant A.T. Kearney. Apple is "a competitor not to be embraced, but to be rejected."

Re:Whata ya wanna bet

[BasilBrush]

If you mean Microsoft, no chance whatsoever. Microsoft has been trying to get it's way into the mobile business for years, with very limited sucess. They have absolutely no power to influence deals there at all.

APPLE PHONES

[Anonymous Coward]

1- Set on vibrate
2- Insert into anus
3- Wait for phone call from Steve Jobs

Re:APPLE PHONES

[DA-MAN]

1- Set on vibrate
2- Insert into anus
3- Wait for phone call from Steve Jobs

You forgot the last two steps!!!

4- ???
5- Profit!

Re:APPLE PHONES

[FuturePastNow]

I don't know what's funnier, this post or the fact that it's been modded "insightful." Good stuff!

they are missing the point

[zoftie]

If apple gets right down to it and doesn't let motorolla spoil the "simplicity" of the interface, the other carriers will have no way stand up to this partnership. People still buy 500$ ipods, like photo ipods. If the product is really good people won't hesitate spending money on it. With most cellphones , interface is at best rather difficult, besides dialing the number. So compared on ease of use most cellphones suck compared to how iPod compares to all other music players.

I for one would be worried to drop iPod phone, because i do drop my other cells regularly. My guess ipod won't be used as headset but rather with handsfree device of some kind, which would be welcomed, i drop my cell so many times.
would they be working then on iPod shuffle based phone? Because that would look more logical, but less unique way.
Suppose iPod may well integrate sudden motion sensor to park harddrive??? That would make ipod phone durable and usable alternative. .. Look at ngage however, device integration has to be careful, because you might just destroy image of your company.
Motorolla cells have best reception of all cellphones, so I hope they make killer iPod phone.

my 22c

Just a thought

[Zapraki]

What could be more irresistible than a device combining the digital-music prowess of Apple Computer (AAPL) with the wireless expertise of Motorola (MOT)?

Cell phones and mp3 players aren't exactly a match made in heaven. One is used to talk to people, the other is used to AVOID talking to people. :)

So ya, imho, stick to your iPod (or, if you're *really* cool, iRiver) for music, and whatever you prefer for a cell phone.

not needed

[Turn-X Alphonse]

I have a MP3 player, I have a mobile phone. I don't need a product which costs twice as much ans is twice as easy for a pick pocket to get

Re:This is why US is waaay behind in cellular tech

[BasilBrush]

There are four different sorts of mobile company:
1. Networks (Own the towers, numbers of these are limited by government licenses).
2. Operators (Buy capacity on the networks, subsidize the cost of phones tied to their contracts).
3. Phone manufacturers.
4. Stores.
1&2 may be the same company.

European phone manufacturers are of course already in the US, e.g. Nokia. Not sure about the operators, but if not, it's probably due to being locked out by the existing networks.

What a deal!

[kuzb]

If they throw in the dog bark translator I'll buy two! No, make that three!

When is the useless feature creep in cell phones going to stop, and the research on actually making the batteries last longer going to start?

Covergence != Profits

[Bruha]

Back during the tech boom companies tried to do the convergence thing and it did not work. I just dont see the need for your mobile phone to play music. What use is your phone if the battery is dead from playing music when you need to make a call.

Re:This is why US is waaay behind in cellular tech

[RobertLTux]

want to know the secret ringtone (sprint pcs) files are setup like Content-Type: audio/MIDI Content-Name: #ringtone name Content-Version: #number Content-Vendor: #vendor name Content-URL: http://#servername/path/filename.midi Content-Size: #size in bytes of file as long as the file is named *.gcd and is served as text/x-pcs-gcd you are good to go

Telco Cartel Hates its Customers

[Doc Ruby]

" Motorola and Apple would let customers put any digital tune they already own on their phones for free."

"Verizon, Cingular, and other wireless operators want customers to pay to put music on phones. They think getting a full song should be like getting a ring tone, snippets for which customers now pay from 99 to $3."

So the mobile carriers are screwing us, because they think they can force us to pay the phone company to put music we already own onto phones that we own. They have absolutely nothing to do with this transaction, except that they can force the phone maker to skip the feature. They don't even have the usual fake cartel argument that this transaction between you, the phone and the copyright holder somehow competes "unfairly" with anything they're trying to sell. No, it's just greed and monopoly, pure and simple.

The carriers are also stopping Palm from putting Bluetooth and WiFi support either into the phones, or in the SDIO slot specs. Because that could somehow allow unlimited use of your phone with your network, which conflicts with their plans to make you pay for every bit transacted. These people are standing in the way of the entire telecom future, as if the RBOCs stood at the gates of the Internet in 1990, forcing PC makers to cripple motherboards to pay the RBOCs for every bit transacted, over a modem or otherwise. The sooner they're destroyed, the better.

Re:Telco Cartel Hates its Customers

[HMA2000]

If what you say is true then you should be able to make a killing selling voip/mp3 cellphones. Since you feel the market isn't adequately meeting the needs of the market.

I suspect the problem is not "the phone company hates people" but rather that the issues involved are a lot more detailed and complex than the treatment on /. implies.

Re:Telco Cartel Hates its Customers

[Doc Ruby]

How do you sell a cellphone that the carrier won't allow to operate on its network? Maybe you're from Europe, where it's basically all GSM, and practically every phone is sold unlocked - you buy your phone from a manufacturer's retailer, and use it on any network. In the US, practically all phones are sold locked to a specific carrier's network. The carrier decides which phones will connect to it. And in this case, the carriers ain't havin' it.

Which is what TFA is about. So you obviously haven't read that. Or understood the controlled market dynamics of US mobile phones. Or realized that US mobile carriers suck so much that you can't even get them to promise you more than 130Kbps, (except in bleeding edge EV-DO trials), and you can't actually get better than 57.6Kbps, due to (deliberately neglected) burstiness. So it is *you* who does not understand the "complexities" and details. Which boil down to: US mobile service is a cartel, which hates its customers, and controls our every transaction greedily. Your post is the product of a "free market" delusion that has never existed in the US, and looks less likely every day.

Re:Telco Cartel Hates its Customers

[HMA2000]

And if this is true then you should make a killing by creating a competing carrier. Your assertion is that the market is not catering to the needs of its customers, that is a golden opportunity for you and others.

Of course, you won't do anything about it because you would prefer to brow beat me for "not understanding." Whatever.

The corporations that control the carriers are indifferent to their customers, they do not hate them, if a carrier believed they could generate significant profits by providing the services you suggest they would do it in a second, I think you'll agree they seek profit above all else.

If you plan on responding with some nonsense about how cartel's use monopolistic pricing practices, save it, I've heard it all before and it does not apply in this case where there are not significant barriers to entry.

Re:Telco Cartel Hates its Customers

[Doc Ruby]

Start a competing mobile telco? BWAHAHAHAHA! Do you know anything other than just the plot of some Ayn Rand books? Really, are you even reading your own posts? Even if I raised the BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to start one, and spent it on the years of infrastructure buildout, I still wouldn't have the thousands of lobbyists infiltrating Washington, who keep the tarriffs and FCC rules structured to keep the cartel intact. Haven't you noticed that the cartel's population is getting smaller, through mergers, tending to an actual monopoly?

Not significant barriers to entry? What the hell are you talking about? These carriers hate their customers, because we represent a threat to their total control of our communications. This story is about the carriers blocking us from copying our own files to our own phones, until they can collect a toll - for no reason except that they can. And any real sense of capitalism would first suggest that one of the carriers would outcompete the others, by allowing these transactions, by making more profits off the increased userbase, through the associated airtime when iTMS gets networked in the next version. But that's not happening here, because the cartel is united in greed, against us, their customers.

People who post drivel like your naive capitalism don't get to throw around words like "nonsense" with any credibility. Save it for people who know nothing about telcos, networks, or corporate capitalism.

Re:Telco Cartel Hates its Customers

[HMA2000]

Oh well you post makes sense.

Telco's don't want to offer new services that would generate profit because they hate us. It has nothing to do with technical or legal complexity, nope, it's hatred!

It makes complete sense now.

BWHAHAHAHAHA!

Re:Telco Cartel Hates its Customers

[Doc Ruby]

No, it has entirely to do with the unmitigated greed of a cartel of telcos - laws and tech are totally irrelevant. They hate us because we threaten their possible control of maximum profits. The feelings I have for you are more complex, related to your willful ignorance and obnoxious attitude. Have fun with your puny phone.

Re:Telco Cartel Hates its Customers

[Doc Ruby]

Maybe not backwards as "always", but certainly "lately". Don't forget that we invented mobile phones - 30 years ago. Unfortunately, we also invented corporations, 125 years ago (around the time we were inventing the telephone), and they're like a cancer over here.

I am curious, though - what does it cost per month, or per GB, for >130Kbps mobile data service? And what does a 1GB SDIO card cost (here it's $67.

Re:Telco Cartel Hates its Customers

[MetaPhyzx]

Here's one, And I used to be a customer. Now, it is local, but hey. It can be done.

Who cares that the US is behind in cellular tech?

[Osty]

I can't believe that people pay $3 a ringtone to begin with! I just find a nice MP3, and upload it. Simple, no headaches, and a real selection, not the last 10 rap songs to come out.

I can't believe people use ringtones at all, much less pay for them. They're damned annoying. I just use a nice, non-annoying "ring" that came with my phone. Simple, no headaches, and no annoying everyone else around me when my phone rings.

Maybe I'm just a luddite, since my aging Motorola v60i does everything I need it to do (and in fact does stuff that I don't need it to do, like browse the web or send text messages). My requirements for a phone:

• Flips open. I've had my share of non-flip phones, and I'll never go back.
• Makes and answers phone calls.
• At least decent reception (most of this is the carrier, not the phone)
• Decent battery life (it should last at least a few days on standby).
• GSM, for convenience (so I can carry the phone with me to other GSM providers as I choose).
• Vibrate mode.

That's it. I don't need no stinkin' color screens, polyphonic ring tones, screensavers, backgrounds, games, PIMs, bluetooth, cameras, mp3 players, or whatever else. My friends make fun of me for sticking with the old v60i, but I haven't found anything yet compelling enough to upgrade. More importantly, my v60i has never crashed or locked up, while their fancy smart phones have all locked up on them more than once. So long as the v60i continues to work, I'll continue to use it.

Other manufacturers to the rescue...

[Humorously_Inept]

People wanting MP3 playback and advanced telephony in a package that doesn't sacrifice one for the other needn't worry. This product will surely exist in a highly marketable form within the next year and if it's no thanks to Apple, then that's all the better for consumers because you won't have to deal with iTMS copy protection and you won't have to install special software to copy music to your MP3 phone.

We've heard from all the major manufacturers where next-generation MP3 phones are concerned except Nokia, who just so happens to have a publicly announced contract with Loudeye. Loudeye, in turn, has signed a deal to provide a music store to O2. Read the press releases these companies have put out in the past few months and connect the dots here, people! The fact that the most powerful mobile phone manufacturer in the world isn't saying much probably means that it's coming to the party with sleeves full of aces!

Samsung is already on its second generation hard drive MP3 phone. The first was an unmitigated disaster and the second's not too bad! You can bet that the third will be a winner.

The world will move forward without Apple and Motorola.

Re:Other manufacturers to the rescue...

[BP9]

I recently got a PPC-6600 ("AudioVox") phone from Sprint. Its running Windows mobile 2003 (ick), but its a capable phone nonetheless and has the Windows Media player thingie as well as an Audible player (both DRM happy).

Sprint does nothing to prevent me from downloading MP3's or DRM'ed crap (at EVDO/3G speeds) then playing them. The phone has a SmartMedia slot and I've got a 1G card in it ($70 at Sams club), there is nothing that prevents me from putting my own cards in and playing music off it.

It has bluetooth and nothing prevents me from transferring whatever files I like to or from the internal memory or SmartMedia slot.

Finally, you can tell the phone app to use any wav or mp3 you like as a ringtone.

Has all the other junk you'd expect these days: still and video camera's, plays stored or streaming video, sync with desktop, ability to load any 3rd party app you like (ssh/irc/decent non-IE browser, etc).

Total price: $420.

It totally mystifies me that Sprint would sell me this thing (with the $150 off) yet wouldn't allow an Ipod style phone. Is that 1G of music on a flash card is somehow less threatening than 20G?

Re:Other manufacturers to the rescue...

[sepreece]

Why "without Motorola"?

Motorola makes and has announced a wide range of music-oriented phones, supporting playback of many different kinds of files and many different arrangements for direct or carrier-mediated loading of content.

Most newer Motorola phones will play MP3 and various other formats, if you can get them into the phone. The "Mobile Phone Tools" software will let you load music into the phone from a PC, unless the carrier has specifically blocked it.

How Apple can strike back

[SuperKendall]

Promote the iTunes phone through Virgin Mobile, make it a pay-as-you go phone. A lot of people don't really need a cell phone all that often, so make it OK for occasional phone use and mostly an iPod... Plus Virgin really needs a bluetooth phone in the lineup.

By going with Virgin and the Pay-as-you go phone, they simultaneously promote the concept of pay-as-you-go instead of expensive fixed monthly fees, and show people they do not have to get everything through the phone provider.

Only problem of course is that Virgin is also a huge media company with its own online store....

Re:What's the point?

[DiscoOnTheSide]

it was called the NGage. You didn't buy it.

Re:Why?!

[soft_guy]

Give me a fucking break. Carrying a phone vs. a phone and an iPod or PDA is actually a pain in the ass. It's the whole reason why I bought a Treo so that I wouldn't have to lug a Tungsten C AND a cell phone around.

This Phone was So Lame anyway

[soft_guy]

Less space than a Nomad - no support for Ogg Vorbis. Lame!

Here's what would be more irresistable

[metamatic]

What could be more irresistible than a device combining the digital-music prowess of Apple Computer (AAPL) with the wireless expertise of Motorola (MOT)?

A device combining the digital music prowess of Apple, the user interface design of Apple, the build quality of Apple, and the wireless expertise of Nokia.

Frankly, Motorola's user interface is a hideous piece of crap that doesn't seem to have improved since the 80s: menus that SHOUT AT YOU, and a phone book that still can't cope with people having more than one phone number (duh!). No matter how good the RAZR looks, it's the same craptastic software on it, and that's why I'm not gonna touch it.

Re:Here's what would be more irresistable

[pagz]

I don't know what motorola phone you have but my Star Tac supported up to 5 different numbers for one person back in 2001 and my current v60 also has support for it.

Now I will say I liked the Star Tac menu for multiple phone numbers was where you scrolled through people's name then then scrolled over for the number. The current one is a little bit more of a pain where you scroll through names then select the name then scroll down through the alternate names.

In anycase yeah the motorola software isn't always the best but you can do all the basics with it.

Re:Here's what would be more irresistable

[metamatic]

Well, there you go--I've tried out Motorola phones in the stores, and not been able to work out the interface to add multiple numbers.

Does it let you categorize the numbers? Sony Ericsson and Nokia phones show different icons for home, work, mobile etc, so you can tell which number is which. I've been looking at the RAZR manual, and I see no mention of that.

Re:Here's what would be more irresistable

[pagz]

Yep there is an icon for work, home, main, mobile, fax and pager. You can reuse the icons if needed. Should be there when you enter the type of number it is unless they changed the Razr software much. Icon's are pretty much the same as they were on my old StarTac. If they havn't changed the Razr software too much try this. Enter the phone book and press the menu key. select setup and scroll down to where it says view change all contacts to primary contacts. Primary contacts is Moto's way of saying default phone number, this will be the one displayed in the general list. You can also sort the phone book by name, speed dial number, voice name and email.

Re:Here's what would be more irresistable

[metlin]

Okay, I was with you for the most part - but hold on a sec.

> the build quality of Apple

You're _kidding_ right? The build quality of Apple for the most part is merely in the looks. Apple stuff is HARDLY durable. You know, my iPod was scratched so badly within 2 days of just sitting in my pocket. Apple products are anything but quality build material.

They're quite flimsy and absolutely not durable. They may look cool and use the latest hip-looking material, but they're NOT durable nor reliable.

Now Nokia - that's a piece of reliable technology. My Nokia phone has withstood so many abuses that even after more than 2 years of use, it still works like a charm.

I'd strongly recommend that Apple never ever gets into making cellphones. Because if I ever got one, I'd have to treat it like a fucking piece of crystalware or something.

Re:Here's what would be more irresistable

[metamatic]

Scratches are inevitable; I was talking about actual construction quality, not how durable the surface is. I was thinking about the iBook, which compares well to an IBM ThinkPad in durability. Yeah, it gets surface scratches, but...

I agree that Nokia are generally well-engineered, though. Unfortunately, their recent designs seem to have been devised by crack-smoking monkeys. Circular keypads, diagonal keypads, keypads with 2 numbers on each button... and let's pretend the N-Gage never happened.

I'm probably gonna get a Nokia for my next cell phone. I just wish they'd fill out their basic range a bit before letting the designers go wild--demand the basics, like Bluetooth, and there really aren't that many Nokias to choose from.

Re:Here's what would be more irresistable

[sepreece]

Not sure what you mean by "menus that SHOUT at you."

If you have a reasonably recent Motorola phone, there should be a "View:" option in the Phone Book Setup menu. Setting it to "Primary contact" will group all the numbers with the same name as a single line that you can scroll left/right in to see the individual numbers.

Re:Here's what would be more irresistable

[sepreece]

Yes, you can assign categories (as well as pictures, ringers, etc.) to numbers in recent Motorola products. You have to be storing the numbers in the phone (not the SIM card) to do so.

The "View: Primary Contact" option groups together numbers that have the same name, so you can just create entries separately with the same name, but there should also be a "More" option when you're creating an entry in the phone book; it will create a new set of attribute lines under the original name.

Re:Whata ya wanna bet

[NanoGator]

"Whata ya wanna bet That the mother of all software companies drove a wedge into that deal.....?"

That depends on how low my karma is at the time.

Re:What's the point?

[breakbeatninja]

Because it was a piece of crap! I need to remove the battery to change the game or something like that? Again, fantastic engineering... btw did the NGage even have an mp3 player, video player and all that frivelous goodness? I didn't think so.

SOP for Motorola

[CarrionBird]

Half the phones they announce either never make it to the market in the first place, or are delayed/recalled due to being buggy as hell.

But they look HOT! Great design team, poor execution.

Re:This is why US is waaay behind in cellular tech

[NanoGator]

"You don't have to go to India to get a fair deal. I am on Fido in Canada using a SE T610 I got for $25. It has the most recent firmware, BT is active, I can use .midi files that I make myself as ringtones."

Well it's not like all of the USA is like that either. I have an MP3 ringtone I made. I put it on my phone by simply uploading it to my site and using my phone to download it. (no bluetooth on this phone.)

Maybe that'll change one day, but I don't find it all that likely. Cingular would really like me to pay by the KB.

Re:Why?!

[NanoGator]

"I don't want my blender to play mp3's."

You would if you found yourself near your blender at times where you can't reach your MP3 player. Maybe I'm just spoiled but my $100 phone does a good job as a phone and as a camera. Pity I don't have any mod points.

Re:The real reason the iPodPhone should be dropppe

[Ibanez]

Sounds like a rehashing of the iPod release. Will people ever learn?

Re:Why?!

[Nyder]

weird, almost all college students I see carry backpacks around.

Do you carry your books and papers in your hands? Balance them on your head?

I could see it being annoying if your just going to work, but school requires so much other things then just your cell phone, keys and wallet.

Maybe your school is the one I should be going too...

Re:Why?!

[Nyder]

Why is there people who actually bother to check up on what people post and then complain about it as an AC?

God, there is so much more you can do on internet then follow up on posters to whine about them trying to get "mod" points. I mean, really now, are you that much of a loser that something like that bothers you so much you have to post about it?

Tell you what, if mod points are that important to you, next time I get mod points I will let you use them, since I just ignore that I have them usually.

Just for those who cares, I do not know the person the AC is fixated on.

Well, i hope you have fun, and I guess if you want to complain about my posts also, have fun. I don't repeat what I say, but I rarely say anything worthwhile...

YAWN! This is already reality in Japan.

[InakaBoyJoe]

As of March 1 there have already been 3 million downloads on 'iPod phones' in Japan. KDDI's "chaku uta full" service is exactly what's being ballyhooed here in the States, and it's been in full operation since November 19, 2004.

See data comparing mobile downloads and iTMS here.

Let's get our heads out of the sand, now shall we?

Everybody wants to be a pimp

[cyberworm]

This is absolutely rediculous. The PHONE companies want to be major players in the digital music scene? I'd really like some of what they are smoking. What in the world should make them think people would want to listen to music from their phones. I don't have the numbers, but I seem to remember that the Nokia Music phone or whatever it was called, was/is a total flop and didn't take off like the phone companies expected.
Now, the hottest (IMO) music player teams up with motorola to create a phone, and these guys think they have a foot in the door to selling music? How about sticking to your bread and butter and sell phone service, make it work right the first time, and give us what we want. You heard me cellbells. How about a decent network and fair pricing before you decide to dabble in online music. Also, why would I buy music over a slow unstable connection on a cell phone, when I can sit down and get what I want from my pc in an eigth of the time. Granted, maybe I'm out somewhere and I want to hear a certain song NOW. I could see having iTunes on my phone being a convenience, but using my phone as my music player plugged into my stereo isn't going to happen. What if I'm having a party? Everytime the phone rings, I have to tell the whole party 'oops, sorry bob's calling, you're going to have to stop dancing for a minute.'
Sillyness. Stick to putting up towers and raping people for crappy service. Let the RIAA focus on raping people for music. There's plenty of assholes out there for everyone.
It seems like these cell companies have forgotten it's not about what they want. It's about what the customer wants. Sell the phones at a profit instead of a loss. If people want it, they will buy it. If not, they won't. But don't strip your customers of options that they may want, because you'd like to expand your market into unrelated areas.
At any rate, Business 2.0 had a concept design of an "ipod" phone, that if this is what they are making, I'll be first in line to buy one. I already have an iPod, but if I had a phone that looked like it too. It'd be in my pocket faster than your wallet on the subway. ;x

Re:This is why US is waaay behind in cellular tech

[Guppy06]

And this has what, exactly, with putting an MP3 player into a cell phone?

I smell a cut-and-paste troll...

Are you sure India is really better?

[rynthetyn]

I mean, yeah the phones and the service is cheaper, and everybody uses SMS service, but when I was complaining to my brother about some issue where Cingular screwed up my bill, his response was that my annoyance was nothing compared to the problems he's had with his Indian cellphone provider, and his stories aren's anywhere near the horror stories of some of his friends (one friend had someone pickpocket his phone and then put it back as soon as they discovered what company it was). And, while he would like to go elsewhere, the company he has is the only one in his area that has phones that can be hooked up to a computer to double as a modem.

Point is, while we like to look at other countries and say how great their service is, there are tradeoffs and the people who live there and actually have to use it may not see things the same way as an outsider looking in does.

Worst..

[One Childish N00b]

Major Hangups Over the iPod Phone

Worst.. pun... ever.

(well someone had to say it... and at 200+ posts it was looking dangerously like they wouldn't)

"Wireless expertise" my @55.

[andreyw]

"Wireless expertise" my arse. I have a Motorola phone, unfortunately. I have an i60 (an iDEN phone), which is a formidable brick, which by now is about two years old. Naturally, had my service provider been anything OTHER than Nextel, I would be using something likely top-of-line, but this is Nextel... and I don't want to cough up dough simply to upgrade to another unstable and buggy Motorola contraption.

Some bugs with the actual software of the phone...

1. Inability to correctly switch cells. Holy shit, batman. It's a "CELL" phone, yet it can't even do *this* right. Everytime I board my Metra train home, I *have* to turn the phone off and back on in order to get a 100% signal, else its near 0%. Checking information gleaned from the diagnostidc mode reveals that the problem is caused by the phone's whatever lack of desire to switch to a nearer tower. Ridiculous.
2. Occasional lack of missed call and voice mail notification when coming back in range. SOmetimes these notification just simply never appear... sometimes they arrive a couple of hours *after* my phone is in range. Dumb.
3. Occasional missed rings. Is this really so terribly hard? Is there any reason why the phone occasionally fails to ring/vibrate?

Physical defects and horrible design.

1. The phone power adapter plug. This one gave out on me after 4 months. Taking the plug apart - the culprit was a cold solder joint. Go figure. Well, I resoldered it.
2. The phone must have been designed for midgets. I am 18 years old and hardly a giant. Unless you're mashing the phone hard against your cheek there is no way in hell your mouth will be on the level of the microphone. This is terribly annoying.

Nickel-and-diming by Motorola/Nextel: Want to use a cradle? Better get a different power supply, since the one that comes with the phone will be rejected. Service issues: Nextel has got to be the only vell provider with 100% reception in the middle of a freaking corn field (Illinois Math and Sci Academy, Aurora, IL) and 0% reception in the middle of a bustling metropolis. (Chicago, IL).

Re:"Wireless expertise" my @55.

[Kiryat Malachi]

Nextel *sucks* in Chicago. Switch off to one of the GSM providers, it's a lot more usable around here.

Re:"Wireless expertise" my @55.

[Hast]

The phone must have been designed for midgets. I am 18 years old and hardly a giant. Unless you're mashing the phone hard against your cheek there is no way in hell your mouth will be on the level of the microphone. This is terribly annoying.
Just to point one thing out here. Hardly any modern phones go all the way to the mouth, they don't have to.

Modern cell-phones don't work like the analog things you have at home. They don't actually send the sound that's coming out of your mouth, it is instead coded in a much more compact fasion and recreated using signal processing.

As such it doesn't have to record the sounds coming out of your moth and pressing it against your cheek (or even picking it up through your skull bone) works as well.

On the other areas I'm not surprised. I have never been particularly impressed with Motorola's phones. (Besides the old "StarTac", that was pretty neat for it's day.)

Re:"Wireless expertise" my @55.

[andreyw]

Yes, the signal is duhbviously compressed using the GSM codec or something akin to that - but if the signal never reaches the mic, that's a problem. And it's certainly a problem for me - whenever I forget I am dealing with a POS Motorola phone I constantly hear "Andy, I can't hear you." Great.

Re:"Wireless expertise" my @55.

[myov]

I had an i60 for about 18 months. Where do I begin?

- Stupid power connector. I had to wiggle the plug just right on my desktop charger to get it to work. My car charger actually corroded and one pin broke off (I love Ontario road salt!)

- Weird SMS issues. If the memory was full I couldn't do much and I stopped receiving v-mail notifications. SInce my company loved to send excessive amounts of email, which forwarded over SMS to the phone, I could wake up in the morning and need to spend 30 minutes receiving and clearing SMS in order to use the phone. Leading in to...

- The phone actually reset multiple times. Most of the time it was when I tried to clear SMS - not good when trying to clear about 100 messages a day. Occasionally it would reset at other times, including when I tried to ANSWER incoming calls! How hard is it to test basic phone functionality like ANSWERING, and not tripping the watchdog?

What did my carrier do? They sent it back to Mot for repairs. The first time, they upgraded the firmware which not only didn't fix what I sent it in for, it made it worse. Also, I lost the ability to speakerphone (Mot goofed and enabled it, when they really wanted you to buy an i90 instead. My company was too cheap to do so. So, they disabled something that ALREADY was enabled at their first oportunity). Back for round 2. This time they reduced it but it still reset often enough. I gave up.

Since Mot is the only provider of iDen phones, you're stuck with their craptacular phones. Compare the feature set to any other phone out there. Mot has no reason to actually give you a phone you would actually want.

Re:"Wireless expertise" my @55.

[Hast]

I believe that many non-GSM phones have this problem, I've never really experienced it with a GSM phone though. And most phones here in Europe don't have microphones that go all the way to the mouth (some clam-shells do).

So it's more a problem with a crappy phone or crappy encoding scheme than a problem with where the microphone is.

Re:This is why US is waaay behind in cellular tech

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"Synchronizing the phones with computer is standard there, and so is "SMSing" ringtones. If one person buys a ringtone from the carrier (which is around 8 cents), that ringtone can be SMSed to all the friends. There is a nominal charge for SMS also, basically its a huge market which people simply love."

You mean MMSing. Unless you like monophonic ringtones.

"Synchronizing the phones with computer is standard there."

Funny, my T-Mobile branded Nokia 3650 doesn't seem to have any trouble talking to my computer.

I need glasses.

[alc6379]

At first glance, I thought the title of this submission was "Major humps iPod phone". My first thought was, Man, the military always gets to fuck with the cool shit first!

Verizon and Cingular's worries are already here...

[Fr0ntier3]

I've had the Nokia 7610 for about half a year now. All of my ringtones are MP3's that I own that I downloaded to my phone (with some simple editting on cooledit pro). I paid for none of them and I can store thousands on my 512 megs of memory. I don't see what Verizon and Cingular are so worried about. Those of us that want to get free ring tones can already do so. Personally I'd love to see this phone come out, it's what I'm waiting for in the next generation of phones.

MOD PARENT UP!!!

[mp3phish]

AMEN!

Also don't forget that the carriers (including cingular, Sprint, and Verison) ALL modify firmware in your phone to disable features which would otherwise allow you to put BG images and ringtones into your phone. _EVERY_ phone that does not allow the user to modify the BG image without paying has been modified in firmware to disable that feature. It is a scam. There are almost NO phones which allow you to modify the firmware without having special programer cables and software. This has all been because of modified firmware installed into the phone.

Re:MOD PARENT UP!!!

[CrankyFool]

Erm. Are you sure?

My Nokia 7610 -- Cingular-branded -- *CAME* with a USB cable. With Nokia's free software, and this cable, when I connect my phone I can browse over to the (included) RS-MMC card. What's that? A 'Sounds' folder? An 'Images' folder? I can drag either MIDIs (that I may have made myself or downloaded somewhere) or MP3s to my phone.

Oh, and Bluetooth? Serial profile works just fine, thank you.

If Cingular's crippled this phone in any real way, I've yet to find it.

It's just as well...

[sd_diamond]

and I hope the deal falls through. Motorola's "wireless expertise" has been on a gradual downslide for the last few years. In fact, they haven't made a really good phone (relative to the technology of the time) since the StarTAC. Each progressive generation of Motorola phones has gotten worse, and their current batch is pathetic. Hopefully Apple and Motorola won't be able to strike a deal on this, and the field will be left open for a better phone manufacturer to move in.

Re:What's the point?

[Humorously_Inept]

As a matter of fact it did have an MP3 player, video player and all kinds of frivolous goodies. Yeah, the battery business was a little lame, but if you're willing to give up the MP3 player and radio (you still keep the video playing capabilities and other frivolous goodies and you can always install third party MP3 software because the Symbian OS is more flexible than a Russian gymnast) you can get the N-Gage QD, which allows you to hot-swap games.

If you want everything on your terms only, I'm afraid you're liable to end up with nothing.

Motorola expertise?

[grumling]

the wireless expertise of Motorola (MOT)?

I wasn't aware they had any expertise, at least in the cell phone division. Their 2-way radios are about the most indestructable you can get (but Icom and Kenwood still have more features). Their chips are still great for many applications. The cable division, well, they bought that, but their modems are better than most. But the Cell division? Nothing but crap. I have a junk Mot phone for work, a Nok phone for personal use. I carry both around with me all day, mostly because the Mot phone won't work in many areas the Nokia phone will. The charger is this tiny little 3 contact connector that needs to be scraped off every few weeks with a sharp knife and rubbing alcohol (an eraser is much too big to reach them), and I have a very tough time hearing the speaker.

But, I do like the idea of an I-pod phone. Imagine putting numbers on the jog dial so you can actually dial a phone number again!

I have to ask...

[Biomechanical]

And I hope someone here, who lives in the U.S. and has bought a few phones on plans and for full price, what is the deal with mobile carriers in the U.S.?

I live in Australia, for those don't already know, and if I have a mobile phone I want to use then all I have to do is put my SIM card in it.

I used to own a Nokia 8210 I bought on a plan two year from B - carrier is Optus.

It was stolen - right after a I bought a nice shell for it with a stylish white dragon on black background, buggrit - and while I was going through the motions of waiting for the insurance to process so I could get a new one, my Mum bought me a Nokia 7650 for my birthday.

All I did was stick my replacement SIM - sent very quickly by B - into the 7650 and started using it straight after it's first charge.

I didn't have to talk to the phone company about having a different phone, unless I wanted to turn on various services that the phone supports, and I still use the 7650 today.

From the various stories I've read here on /. I'm getting the impression that your mobile phone carriers are dictating what features customers can have on their own phones, regardless of whether or not the feature has anything to do with the mobile service.

How the hell does Verizon or Cingular dictate to Apple and Motorola that they can't let the owner of the phone directly transfer music onto the phone from their iPod or personal computer?

When did the telephone carriers suddenly become the judges of how phone companies construct their devices?

If you want to sell a mobile phone, or other comms device, don't you just build a device that conforms to the FCC specs and then sell it?

Why does Verizon have any say over how your phone works, other than asking you not to put a device on the network which might interfer with it?

Re:I have to ask...

[Humorously_Inept]

They have a say because they have tens of millions of customers and they're buying potentially millions of phones. When you're ordering major quantities, you get what you want or something pretty close to it. It's not even unusual for a mobile phone manufacturer like Nokia to make a phone that only one customer like Verizon will be buying. In that case, it would be exactly what the customer wants. These operators aren't exactly the judges of what manufacturers construct, but they are the judges of what they will buy. A company that's looking to sell mobile phones would do well to accomodate its customers. Nokia is a major innovator in the standards field and some people speculate that its reluctance to accomodate customers who wanted their standards (i.e. Picture Messaging from Sprint) on phones exclusively in place of more widely accepted standards (i.e. MMS to Sprint's Picture Messaging, for example) is what cost them market share in 2004.

Verizon is particularly fussy about its hardware and software requirements and because it's a CDMA customer you can't really swap phones around with any great ease. You couldn't use your 7650 on North American networks because it uses the wrong frequency bands but if you had a supported phone and it wasn't locked to some other network, I don't think Cingular or any other GSM operator would object to selling you a SIM card and a plan. Whether or not they have standard data services like MMS and stuff is another matter. I don't know.

Re:I have to ask...

[CXI]

For one thing, as stated in the article, we get phones with the service sometimes for free, or for hundreds of dollars less than if you just bought it. The market is heavily geared towards that model and in general people just aren't used to paying that much for a phone.

Second, there are too many standards so not only do they not want you to, but you usually simply can't bring your old phone with you. It won't work. This is good for the provider because they only need to do limited testing, and they can dangle the carrot of a "free phone" in front of you to get you to sign up for multi-year contracts.

So, the reason Verizon can dictate phone features to Motorola is simply by saying "We aren't going to buy the normal hundreds of thousands of them to bundle with our service if you put in this feature." Why would Motorola spend the time and money to create a phone that they basically aren't going to sell in volume?

Re:I have to ask...

[sepreece]

In the US, most phones are sold with subsidies from the carrier, so that the phone is often "free" with a contract for a certain period of service. The manufacturers sell most of hteir phones that way, so they build them to suit the carriers. It's very hard, in the US, to buy a phone for full price.

Many major US carriers use CDMA, rather than GSM, so they don't have SIM cards. Some US CDMA carriers will let you bring a phone you already own in and activate it on their network, but some will only accept phones that were sold for their network. In fairness, this is in large part because their customer service people can only support users on the carrier's phones.

If you have a GSM phone, you can generally put any carrier's SIM into it to use that carrier's network. As you note, some special network features may not be available or may take some reprovisioning of the phone. However, if the phone was bought with a subsidy, it may be locked to the carrier that provided the subsidy, in which case it will not work with other carrier's SIMs.

Some of these conditions also exist in other markets, the US is only unique in the universality of the carrier subsidy model.

Re:This is why US is waaay behind in cellular tech

[Mr2001]

What I'm trying to figure out is why one of these European or Asian cellular providers doesn't come over here and start releasing these awesome phones and wonderful service.

Even if you're content to use GSM(*), you can't just bring any random foreign phone into the US and start using it. The European mobile phone frequency bands are 900 and 1800 MHz; in the US, they're 800 and 1900 MHz.

(* = There are many technical reasons why you might prefer CDMA, which is what Sprint and Verizon use. Soft handoffs is one: dropped calls are less likely because your phone can talk to multiple towers at once. Better privacy is another: using a radio receiver to eavesdrop on a CDMA call is next to impossible.)

Am I only the only one who noticed?

[tod_miller]

The page rank friendly linking? 'digital music' to his website of ringtones?

WTF? take off the advert right now! If I search for digital music I don't want nextel ringtones coming up, yet this articles publication implies that /. does!

This article is a copy/paste *with* link spam!

WARNING: LINK SPAM IN ARTICLE. kthxbye (is /. part of the cure, or part of the problem?)

Carrying all that?

[jhmaughan]

I completely agree! Specialization of labor works well, why not specialization of gadget duty. But then again, how are we going to carry all that?

I have a cell phone, PDA, keys, wallet, and if I add an iPod, my contact lense rewetting drops, my chap stick, or who knows whatever i might need, that piles up to a butt load of stuff. Being a typical male, i have it scattered across the eleven total pockets among my cargo pants and jacket. That gets annoying if i need to change pants or my jacket.

So does that mean we are all headed toward purses?

Re:Carrying all that?

[Ohreally_factor]

That gets annoying if i need to change pants or my jacket.

What sort of pansy changes his pants more often than once a month? Be a real man, for once. And by real man, I mean a real stinky man. =)

BTW, jokes aside, is your jacket one of these? (Hey, it looks like they're having a sale on pants, too. Yay! I can start changing my pants once a week!=)

Re:Why?!

[Walker2323]

I posted this message because I truly believe that, for the most part, when companies try to combine gadgets like this, the end result is a sub-par piece of tech. If they quit making this shit, then maybe people like myself wouldn't feel the need to comment negatively upon it. And the next time you have something to say, why not do it without hiding behind the AC cloak? Are you that unsure of your convictions?

Innovate!

[teknokracy]

Why not just have the phone be able to plug in to a shuffle, or something. phones do NOT need to play MP3s, as far as I'm concerned. It'd be stupid - you are listening to a song then all of a sudden the phone rings and your song ends and you're thrown in to a conversation. the iPod is great. Cell phones are great. But maybe Apple should just design a cell phone, rather than designing a music player cell phone. Apple reinvented the personal computer, the portable music player, and now they have to re-invent the cell phone.

Semens *75 phones ..

[pecko666]

Well, Siemens will support acc in their new *75 range of mobile phones. I think that this can be seen as iPod phone ;-) i75 ;-)

I'm sorry WHAT?

[skrolle2]

One insider says that even if Cingular and Verizon, the two largest wireless players, won't sell the Motorola-Apple phone, smaller rivals, such as T-Mobile, may peddle it to gain ground on the industry leaders. The US cell phone market really confuses me, why couldn't you go to a store and buy the phone without the blessing/subscription plan/lock-in of a carrier, and then just pop your current SIM-card into the new phone? Why do you have to buy your phones through a carrier? Are there no stores which just sell phones without subscription plans? Can't you move your SIM-card to any phone you want?

Re:I'm sorry WHAT?

[smellystudent]

If it's anything like the UK market, the handsets are heavily subsidised by the carriers.

I can pick up a good phone for GBP30 with a 12 month lockin, or pay GBP300 for the same phone without the lockin. I'll take the discount thanks :-)

I'm sorry WHAT?

[skrolle2]

One insider says that even if Cingular and Verizon, the two largest wireless players, won't sell the Motorola-Apple phone, smaller rivals, such as T-Mobile, may peddle it to gain ground on the industry leaders.

The US cell phone market really confuses me, why couldn't you go to a store and buy the phone without the blessing/subscription plan/lock-in of a carrier, and then just pop your current SIM-card into the new phone? Why do you have to buy your phones through a carrier?

Are there no stores which just sell phones without subscription plans?

Can't you move your SIM-card to any phone you want?

Reliability of your sources?

[Ohreally_factor]

You pretty much lost me with your first source, downhillbattle.org, which lost all credibility (with me, anyway) after the iPod battery hoax/fiasco.

Re:Reliability of your sources?

[mp3phish]

Try reading the forbes and FT articles then. There are plenty to choose from. Just because you don't agree with the first one doesn't mean none are credible.

Re:Reliability of your sources?

[Ohreally_factor]

Forbes is credible? Where you been, man?

Integrated Devices

[itsthebin]

a phone with itunes - whoda thunk it. I have seen quite a few of these phone integrated devices , the PDA/Phones... Can you turn the device on without actually activating the phone? if not it becomes a paperweight while you are on the aeroplane. as for the music playing phone - there are many phones out there with either hardware or software Mp3 players built in...though I would rather use my axim x50v I do not see the attraction of itunes .... sheep are cute , sheep are cute , sheep are soft and curly....

Don't talk to me about motorola's "expertise"

[obarthelemy]

I purchased an E398 a few months back, and it's the worst phone I ever had:
- takes longer to boot than my XP desktop
- flaky power/headset connectors, my phone sometimes doesn't charge during the night, and half the time I have to disconnect the headphones to have a conversation
- volume is too low, without headphone or hands-free I have trouble hearing what my correspondents say
- screen illegible in bright sunlight
- phone makes all king of noises, especially at boot, even in silent mode, so I do look like one of those obnoxious idiots
- the USB synch software doesn't work, I tried on 4 different PCs. And got no support.
- typing SMSs with their "assist" feature is actually slower than without it
- the phone is incredibly sluggish, kind of always looses the first key typed when it's in sleep mode, and for some reason I can't wrap my brain around that
- I'm still waiting for the bigger RAM cards that were promised for January

On a brighter note, the UI is nice (though slow), there are nice "classic phone" ringtones, the unit is solidly built.

I'm thinking of junking it, though.

Mmmmm, actually feels good to vent my frustrations ;-)

GTFU, maybe?

[Ohreally_factor]

This is the fourth time you've posted these same links.

What is wrong with you? Are you one of those people that thinks that repeating something over and over again makes it true? Wipe the froth from your mouth and breath through your nose for a bit.

I really hope I don't have to see another duplicate post of yours as I read further down.

Re:GTFU, maybe?

[mp3phish]

Maybe you didn't notice. Each post was in reply to "where are your sources?" Just because you don't like ONE OF THE SOURCES doesn't mean everything you say is accurate. In fact, you haven't posted a single source to back up any of your claims.

Re:This is why US is waaay behind in cellular tech

[Ohreally_factor]

I'll vouch for what Nano says, although I did go the BT route. I have a T610 and I use T-Mobile. Downloaded the midi to the computer and uploaded to the phone. It took maybe 2 minutes (other than the time spent looking for the midi, which was maybe 10 minutes.

Re:This is why US is waaay behind in cellular tech

[Ohreally_factor]

I think he means that because the carriers are used to making a hefty margin on that $3 ringtone, they're expecting at least as high a margin on an actual "real" song.

Re:This is why US is waaay behind in cellular tech

[ezthrust]

Yeah, but that is Pay as you go. Those plans are the cash cow of any mobile provider.

Where's your school spirit?

[Ohreally_factor]

This phone was designed with your mind in mind.

Re:This is why US is waaay behind in cellular tech

[KH]

They've come. Have your heard of T-Mobile? That's the mobile branch of Deutsch Telekom (German). Doesn't DoCoMo provide some sort of services to American careers? DoCoMo is mobile branch of NTT (Japanese).

I don't know how they operate in the US. I'm living in Europe. But from what I can gather, their practices seem to be adjusted to the American market.

Significantly missing is Vodafone... They are all over the world, but I don't see their presence in the US.

As a Moto V710 "user"

[fsck!]

I'm sure the delays are due to software or hardware issues on Moto's part. Their platform is insanely awful, and no amount of insanely great from Apple is going to be enough to bring it back to just mediocre. Come on guys, why does everything having to do with the contact list get exponentially slower with each entry over a dozen? Why do your cameras suck so bad? More to the point, why couldn't Apple found a less horrible cell phone maker to join up with, like Nokia or LG?

Pah!

[CarrionBird]

I can do all those things and more on my US phone.(cingular) We have the same abilities here, it's just that few use them. (and some providers lock things so that you are forced to buy from them.... looking at you verison!)

I wouldn't blame apple

[Matey-O]

And I'm sure this won't be moderated up due to how late I'm posting, but I've never been more dis-satisfied with a piece of hardware than with my and my wife's v600's. They've got stability issues that rank right up there with windows 95/98. (I was on my fourth phone in less than a year...Now I'm using a Nokia with _no_ issues.)

Svelte is good, features are good, but they're worthless without stability.

What department?

[ljnelson]

What department is this story from? Or is the headline enough of a groaner?

Funny, I had an mp3 phone years ago

[Evets]

It was a samsung I got through sprint. There was talk about streaming mp3's, but the reality was that the RealPlayer interface you were bound to was the only way to put music on it.

Still... the phone worked great. I had it from about 2000-2002.

What's the big deal anyways. Windows Mobile phones have been able to play music for a while now. I don't get why anybody cares whether you have an iPod or any of the other 200 mp3 players on the market. Yeah, it has the cool spinner wheel, and a buttload of space, but it can't possibly be that much better than any other product.

Re:The real reason the iPodPhone should be dropppe

[jaysones]

Who could be interested? Oh yeah, the billion or so people who own both a cell phone and an iPod, that's who.

Re:This is why US is waaay behind in cellular tech

[EnglishDude]

3 cents a KB? Ouch. On my Orange World Access plan, I pay £10 for 10MB and 80p per meg (very roughly 0.08p per KB) afterwards. On my O2 phone, I get 1meg free and around £2 per meg and 500 mins free WAP - but I use my Orange phone for internet access mainly for obvious reasons ;) Also on both my phone plans, I get 500 free text message (O2) and 3,000 free texts (Orange). Picture messaging is around 20p but I never use picture messaging anyway. And I'm not that happy with either of the networks unlike you ;)

Why doesn't Microsoft have this problem?

[amarquis]

The article claims that Apple can't get the carriers to accept an iTunes phone because the song downloads don't go over the airwaves. If that's the problem, then why can I go out and get a Microsoft PocketPC/Smartphone and download songs by syncing. Does this article say anything true or interesting?

Actually, no.

[Roadkills-R-Us]

The product is not the problem. The distributors are the problem.

For some reason, the distributors, who are effectively screwing consumers out of metric tons of money by playing up to teenagers and charging usurious prices, don't like the idea of losing all that money. Corporate pirates are like that, sometimes.

Re:This is why US is waaay behind in cellular tech

[Grishnakh]

What I'm trying to figure out is why one of these European or Asian cellular providers doesn't come over here and start releasing these awesome phones and wonderful service.

They're already here. T-Mobile is a German company. But their pricing structure is just like all the American companies'. Why would they offer cheaper service when they can make more money offering the same crappy service that Americans are used to, and willingly buy?

There's no point to a company breaking ranks and offering better phones and cheaper service. There wouldn't be enough customers who care about such things to make it worth it. Americans want phones (and everything else) cheap, and don't care much about quality, service, or features.

Re:Why?!

[thparker]

Kudos to you for needing a fucking break. You must have a very active sex life.

I'm not saying convergence is a bad thing -- I have a P800 for the same reason you bought your Treo. I'd usually leave my Palm handheld in my bag and have my cellphone with me, so it made sense to get a single device that handles both functions well. But that's not the original context.

The original poster was complaining that he'd like to have an MP3 player, but can't fit it in between his phone, keys and wallet, while at the library or University class where he almost certainly is already carrying some kind of bag for his books. Given the wide range of MP3 players on the market, this struck me as kind of silly. He could wear an iPod shuffle on a cord around his neck if he wanted. There are a number of reasons for not having an MP3 player -- you don't like the players available, you don't care for the sound quality, you have nostalgia for your vintage cassette player, whatever -- but that it's too heavy? Bah.

Re:The real reason the iPodPhone should be dropppe

[Trillan]

Of that "billion," how many are satisified with the battery life of either device?

MOT iPod iPhone

[__aaeaks4554]

I thought the delay was because Steve Jobs wanted to charge $0.99 per call?

==This post is for humor only.==

Re:Still Doesn't Work

[MetaPhyzx]

You are noting that this is in respone to the parent right, which referred it entering the wireless game as a telco, right? That it can be done, right?