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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[Ohreally_factor]

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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

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.

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?

[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.

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.

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

[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

[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.

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.

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!

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.

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: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: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: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?

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.

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.

[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.

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!

[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!

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

[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....

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:Well then.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.

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.

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

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).

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.

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.

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: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:The real reason the iPodPhone should be dropppe

[Ibanez]

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

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?

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).

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?

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 ;-)

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?

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.