line of site: mobile music Archives

January 09, 2007

iPhone: why Cingular exclusive? here's why

This is all conjecture, but here's my guess on why Apple chose to give Cingular the exclusive on the iPhone:

I'm guessing this is $800-900 device. The way these deals usually get done is the manufacturer has to make a deal with the carrier to sell a minimum X number of phones at a retail price that is palatable to consumers (in this case, $499 or $599 depending on the storage capacity of 4GB or 8GB), in exchange for the exclusive and being able to lock the subscriber up for 1 or 2 years. Cingular agrees to eat a few hundred dollars per device that they hope to make back by locking you into that contract, and for a device like this, enticing you to sign up for a $39.99 all you can eat data plan to go with the phone and whatever voice plan you choose. When they don't meet their minimum X, they are generally sold off to secondary retailers and authorized resellers such as inphonic (wirefly.com) or Amazon.

If you read your Cingular contract carefully, you will see there is a replacement cost for your phone that will generally exceed the price you are paying by quite a bit.

Let's face it, this will be a hot phone, so I'm sure it wasn't a hard deal for Cingular to stomach, even with the steep subsidy cost. Having an exclusive allows Cingular to control their profit or loss on the device. It's good for Apple, because they can get distribution of their device at a retail price that is well below their cost while they work with their manufacturer on finding cheaper components to raise margins for their version 2 device.

Apple's marketing plans clearly called for a device to be sold outside the U.S. (read the 10:48 comment at engadget that mentions Europe in Q4 07 and Asia in 08) - so that cut out Sprint and Verizon, whose CDMA networks aren't very compatible with any other place except Korea. That leaves T-Mobile and Cingular, who have GSM networks. I'm sure they shopped the deal, but if i were doing this deal, I'd look at the demographics of both networks and probably arrive at the same conclusion.

Link to Apple - iPhone

Posted by Steve at 02:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 09, 2006

XandMail markets a mobile Podcasting solution

RSS is slowly making it's way to mobile. You know it when then companies that sell to mobile operators all start creating a solution for it. Having working in that arena for a long time, I'm sure in 2007, a bunch of these companies will be slugging it out in the RFP process with MNOs.

Like everything RSS related, the demand has to come from the consumers; and mobile is no exception. Since podcasting isn't a pure mobile technology (like SMS or MMS was/is) it will be a bit of a challenge for vendors to push such solutions, but when the subscribers start asking for it is when it will happen.

Will someone create the demand, or will the demand come as a natural progression of feeds and podcasts on the desktop?

As many of the latest devices all have on-board RSS readers and podcasting clients, the solutions will be built around legacy phone support, rich media transcoding, and network bandwidth optimization - all built on top of a top notch directory.

What remains to be seen is whether or not the operators will see distribution of content as competitive to their evolving rich media business models, or complimentary. There's an opportunity for them to view it as a complement, but I'll put my money on short-sightedness.

Link to XandMail, way more than messaging

Posted by Steve at 05:32 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

June 01, 2006

joey romeo has the Nokia E61

I must admit I am tempted, but I'm pretty happy with my W800i and Blackberry 8700c combo i am carrying right now. any bets on whether i'll break down and fall off the wagon for buying a new phone?

Nokia E61 Quadband Unlocked Mobile phone

Posted by Steve at 08:10 AM | Comments (42) | TrackBack

April 20, 2006

more on Sony Ericsson W800 vs W810 [via MobileBurn]

i've pretty much stopped reviewing phones here because Michael Oryl at MobileBurn just does such a great job. His review of the W810 Walkman phone is no different. If you were interested in the W800, read this review. If you are here in the US, the major thing you want out of this phone is the 850Mhz band that allows it to work on Cingular.

Sony Ericsson W810 Review (MobileBurn)

btw - his feed is here:

http://www.mobileburn.com/xml/rss2.jsp

Posted by Steve at 12:43 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

January 05, 2006

PSP Connect Service Incoming - Kotaku

We all knew this was coming. Very cool. The PSP is such a great movie watching device. Let's see if Sony can attract the same level of interest that the iTunes store has.

PSP Connect Service Incoming - Kotaku

Posted by Steve at 08:42 AM | Comments (9)

September 19, 2005

more on music phones

a few days ago i posted about testing phones for being a combined phone/mp3 player/camera, and i must say i've pretty much settled into using the Sony Ericsson W800i. it's just generally a great phone, and the only thing i miss from my nokia 6880 is mobipocket reader. it's the first phone i've been really recommending to a lot of people in a long time. that said, it's a little pricey to import right now, and in the UK these things are going for �49 with a contract, so maybe we'll see these at T-Mobile US or Cingular at a reasonable price in the future, but i wouldn't count on it - i've heard that TMO US has all but thrown out SonyE/// from their handset manufacturer list, and they'd need to produce another model for the 850Mhz band for Cingular, who also seems pretty happy with their RCKR exclusive. I'm using the W800 with Cingular Blue in Chicago, and haven't had any reception problems as of yet.

anyway, a good camera is important to me, so it's pretty much put the audiovox smt 5600 out of the running, despite it's ties to yahoo! music unlimited.

of course, just last week - orange released an update to this windows mobile phone branded as the Orange SPV C550.

there's a good albeit somewhat cranky review of this phone at TrustedReviews, who incidentally i am trusting more and more these days, that points out this phone still isn't quite up to snuff with a few things (specificlaly memory card still under the battery!) but you will noticed that they did bump up the camera spec to a 1.3 Megapixel - which think will be enough to get a few people to upgrade.

Posted by Steve at 06:54 AM | Comments (0)

September 09, 2005

testing phones for digital music (no ROKR)

first of all, the ROKR - big yawn. the *only* thing cool about this phone is that is has Apple DRM decoding included. that's a key feature however, and will sell many phones. a version 2 of this phone might be better.

at any rate, the two phones i have been trying out are the SonyEricsson W800i, the so called "Walkman Phone" and the Audiovox SMT 5600 (Same as the Orange SPV)

(images cribbed from orange UK )

Both of these phones can support a 1GIG memory card (in fact, you can put a 2GIG card in the W800i) - a memory stick Duo PRO with the SE, and mini-SD with the audiovox.

Here are the pros and cons of each so far, both as a music player and in general:

SonyEricsson W800i
pros

comes with some great sounding passive noise reduction headphones. similar to the Shure ones that cost $200

copying audio files to the device as a USB mass storage device, the phone's audio directory automatically syncs these

external controls - play/pause, volume up/down on this phone. you do not have to use software to contol the music

a 2 MegaPixel camera that is really good

good integration of the music app. as new songs play, they pop over what you are doing unobtrusively. if the phone rings while listening, you can take the call with the headset, and then resume. it's slick.

the provided adaptor allows you to use your own headphones

cons

this pop-port-type connection thing. no native USB connector, no standard headset jack. the pop-port wire does have a standard 1/8" jack about midway down. why not put this on the phone?! (this is also a pro though). if you lose this cable, though, you are screwed

incompatible with every other Sony Ericsson charger (this is a con for me, as i have invested lots in SE charging solutions)

the memory card fills up fast with 2 megapixel photos

not really compatible with any online music store, unless you un-DRM your iTunes tracks, and then convert to AAC

the email app is weak

Audiovox SMT 5600
pros

well, the best thing about this phone is that it is compatible with Yahoo! music subscription content. it also plays MP3 and other windows media audio (and video)

the sound is pretty decent with the provided headphones

this phone uses a standard headset jack (but not a headphone jack). that means the headphones can be replaced and converted to a standard 1/8" headphone jack

the email app on this phone is pretty good.

active sync works WAY better than the nokia sync applications i've been using

cons

one annoying thing is that when syncing new tracks to the phone, you have to have to manually "sync" the libary with the file system. after doing that, you have to set windows media player 10 to look at the memory card again vs. the phone memory - even though you can't sync audio files to the phone memory

sucky, sucky, VGA camera

no memory card at all included with this phone

c'mon, no one likes using a Microsoft OS, do they?

Verdict:

if you aren't tied to a particular music subscription service, or are pretty adept at converting your library - you gotta go with the W800i. if you are really into Y! music unlimited, and don't care so much about the camera - look no further than the Audiovox SMT 5600.

for a much better review, see mobile burn's review.

Posted by Steve at 08:55 AM | Comments (1)

August 08, 2005

the perfect y! music player, almost...

i purchased a cool new mp3 player today, the Samsung YP-F1, thinking it would be absolutely perfect to accompany my new attachment to yahoo! music unlimited. EXCEPT, it doesn't support playsforsure subscription mode! only download! bad Samsung!

any chance a firmware upgrade will solve this? if not, back to the store it goes...

Posted by Steve at 11:55 PM | Comments (3102) | TrackBack

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