Apple has in San Francisco where the iTunes phone was upstaged by the iPod nano and saw a high return rate with slow sales through the month of October.
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Uh, when did Apple buy Flickr?
to imagine flickr integration. A third party iPhoto plugin already exists. Would be great if Apple could formalize this into the app itself. Oh, and there is no reason for Apple to actually own Flickr. I don't think yahoo is selling...
The entire story is thin and frankly sounds made up because they know it will get syndicated on all Mac sites.
Why would Apple give a c*** about ringtones?
because they generate $2 bn in worldwide annual revenues perhaps?
You know I'm not the space-age whiz kid I used to be, but it's flat easy to edit MP3 ringtones on my PowerBook and send them to my Nokia 6101. And the 6101 doesn't even have Bluetooth -- for the amount I actually used Bluetooth with my previous phone, it wasn't worth almost twice as much money to get it with the new one. I have to use my Palm Tungsten as an IRDA "bridge" -- Bluetooth to the Tungsten then IRDA from Tungsten to phone -- and still it's not too big a hassle to fabricate my own iRingtones system. Maybe it's just not worth supporting all the quirks of ringtones on all those phones when people who want to do it probably already are.
For those in the know, sure it makes sense to do it with bluetooth or IrDA. For most people though that is still non obvious and just plain too hassly.
I think the convienience of the purchase of a WAP Push where it actually gets delivered to your phone has some merit. I also think it's easy to under estimate the instant gratification purchasing thrill people get from just buying something - how else to explain the incredibly poor value and disproportionate cost of a ringtone right now that people seem to be prepared to just ignore.
Anyway I can't stand music as ringtones, the novelty wears off after a second, I just want to know my phones ringing, not listen to compressed tinny music coming out of a tiny speaker when the phone goes. I just replaced all of my alerts and ringtones with sounds from the Mac. I don't have bluetooth but get them WAP pushed direct to my phone from macostones.com (I'm unashamedly plugging it as I helped with it, but mac sounds really are very cool as ringtones).
My 2 cents but it's the beginning of the end of the novelty c*** pop song ringtone for $5.00 business, I give them maybe 2-3 years before they burn themselves out and people figure out other viable, alternative, cheaper ways of delivering content to mobiles.
I actually think Apple could well just have been about to do this, putting the first nail in the coffin with an intergrated iTMS solution that undercut everyone and at the same time didn't give operators a single cent of the action - This would have been interesting to watch and would have forced people in the mobile industry to reassess how they do things. Maybe though that was a fight Apple didn't want right now, they still need help getting some traction with iTunes on mobile.
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Grizzled Veteran
Joined: Apr 2002
Flickr?
Did I read that right? Flickr integration with iLife? If that's true, it could be bigger than the ringtones the story is supposedly about!