Cingular patent may foreshadow Apple deal
updated 02:45 pm EST, Thu December 21, 2006
Cingular, Apple deal?
The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office today published a patent application from Cingular Wireless describing a two-prong marketing approach for providing music, TV, and movies to cellular phone customers. Apple was said to have struck a deal with Cingular earlier this month to purchase wholesale MVNO wireless service capacity from the carrier in an effort to enter the domestic wireless services market. Adding fuel to the fire, Digg founder Kevin Rose in early December revealed alleged details about Apple's iPhone in the Diggnation video blog, where he describes the unit as a very small device boasting flash-based storage of 4GB and 8GB capacities with the ability to work with all major providers -- including Cingular, T-Mobile, and Verizon. The new patent describes both a wireless streaming based subscription-type service as well as the ability to access content on internet services such as Apple's iTunes Store via digital licensed keys.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jun 2005
End to end to do it right
Apple is about integrating hardware and software. The ROKR episode proved to do it right you have to control the whole pipeline. So since then they picked up a huge data center facility for...? Being a mobile provider! My detailed take on the handheld hardware and what services they'll do (music/vid download, sync, remote desktop..) is here at http://tinyurl.com/y8rdcr