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Motorola dispels negative iTunes phone rumors

updated 09:05 am EDT, Thu May 19, 2005

Motorola on iTunes


Motorola Chief Executive Ed Zander said mobile phone carriers do not oppose his company's plan to sell a phone that doubles as a music player. "There is ," Zander said. "I don't know where these rumors got started." Zander said the phone, known as Rokr, will be out in "a couple of more months," reiterating comments he made in April. Schaumburg-based Motorola said in July of 2004 that it was developing a phone that uses Apple Computer's iTunes software to play music. "When we did this deal last year, we knew exactly what carriers were interested in," he said. Zander said he had a Rokr with him but declined to show it to reporters. "I love it," he said.


by MacNN Staff

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 industry, digital music/video

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  1. denim

    Mac Elite

    Joined: Jun 2000

    0
    05/19, 09:48am | report spam | Reply |

    Stepping on toes

    He'd probably have been stepping on Marketing toes to show the phone before it was ready.

  1. james9490

    troll

    Joined: May 2005

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    05/19, 10:38am | report spam | Reply |

    What about WMA?

    iTunes has one fatal flaw, and it is the lack of native WMA support. Motorola will be under tremendous amount of pressure to support WMA because vast majority of digital music listeners will go for phones that support at least both MP3 and WMA. It will be a matter of time before Motorola is forced out of the current contract because of high WMA demand, and it will be a huge blow to Apple unless they support WMA and let Motorola be in charge of their file format choice.

  1. garmonbosia

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Aug 2002

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    05/19, 10:58am | report spam | Reply |

    james9490

    Let me say it first: Get a clue!

    70% of legal electronic downloads are aac+fairplay right now. WMP is becoming irrelevant in this area.

  1. DeepDish

    Forum Regular

    Joined: May 2001

    0
    05/19, 11:08am | report spam | Reply |

    james9490

    You sound like a troll.

    I don't want Apple to blow this lead either. I am hoping they have learned from the past and have a plan.

    Will they support WMA someday, maybe.

  1. hayesk

    Professional Poster

    Joined: Sep 1999

    0
    05/19, 12:42pm | report spam | Reply |

    Re: What about WMA?

    WMA is irrelevant. It's merely MS's attempt at gaining majoriy in the online music market. It is a minority and doesn't offer Apple's customers anything they don't already have.

  1. resuna

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jan 2005

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    05/19, 03:43pm | report spam | Reply |

    WMA actually scares me

    Windows Media 9 and later, the versions that support encrypted WMA using Microsoft's Intellectual Rights Management (their name for their Digital Rights Management platform) include components installed in the NT kernel to try and prevent applications from "sniffing" the data stream and removing the protection. That is, even Administrator rights aren't enough to override it, and even people from Microsoft have run into problems caused by IRM conflicting with applications...

    I had WindowBlinds, DesktopX, ObjectDock, all fired up and running happily away. Then I tried to open an IRM'ed (Microsoft-speak for DRM) email. Nada. Wouldn't open. I fired up OWA, and I could get the email to open. Weird.

    Futzed around, and finally (after swallowing what's left of my ego) called the helpdesk. They had me run a little app that checked the IRM stuff, and it said... "Conflicting application running. Please shut down... "WindowBlinds". WTF? How could WindowBlinds hork up rights management??? I know - it's probably one of those questions I *really* don't want the answer to...     -- http://blog.shawnlmorrissey.com/ (you can find it in google but it seems to have been deleted from Microsoft's blog server)

  1. porieux

    Baninated

    Joined: Mar 2001

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    05/19, 04:37pm | report spam | Reply |

    i dont think hes telling

    i dont think hes telling the whole truth there.

    i think the v710 was supposed to be the first itunes phone until VZW picked it up.

    WMA? LOL!

  1. pharmacopoeia

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Feb 2001

    0
    05/19, 07:31pm | report spam | Reply |

    WMA has little impact

    Just open up Limewire or the other file sharing programs and see what formats people are sharing. WMA is just a small fraction of the files anywhere.

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