CANNES (France) - With a covetous eye on the success of portable music players, mobile phone makers are going after would-be iPod buyers by building high-quality players into their handsets.
Sony Ericsson announced on Monday it will soon market music-player mobiles under its parent's Walkman brand, drawing on the music catalogue of its sister company Sony BMG, the world's No. 2 record company.
And Nokia, the world's leading phone maker, announced an alliance with software giant Microsoft that will allow mobile subscribers to load music from a PC onto their phones - much the way that a digital music player works.
Unlike owners of dedicated MP3 players, Nokia users will also be able to download tracks wirelessly onto their handsets and transfer them to computer for storage or burning onto a CD.
At a news conference on the first day of the 3GSM World Congress, a major mobile industry gathering on the French Riviera, the company also unveiled a new 3G phone with an integrated music player and high-quality stereo output.
Mobile phone makers and networks are looking for ways to boost their revenue as it becomes more difficult to find new customers on saturated industrialised markets and even in some developing countries.
Free voice calls over the Web, which could soon be possible with mobiles - Motorola and Internet phone company Skype Technologies SA have just teamed up to explore that possibility - pose a further threat to revenues, forcing mobile operators to look to entertainment and data services for their future profitability.
With high-speed 3G networks now widespread, companies like Nokia hope demand for pricier, more sophisticated phones and airtime will be spurred by new features from wireless gaming and instant messaging to pay-TV and remote banking services.
The uptake of 3G phones last year fell short of earlier predictions, but it said on Monday it still expects the number of people using them to reach 70 million people at the end of this year from 16 million in December 2004.
The company unveiled on Monday a phone that has a music player delivering high-quality audio through a stereo output as well as a new application that organises music tracks into iPod-style play-lists. With up to a gigabyte of storage - or a quarter of the Apple iPod Mini's capacity - it can hold more music than many of the flash-based mp3 players currently on the market.
It has partnered with Seattle, Washington-based Loudeye to provide a download service to make songs available and hinted that deals with record labels could follow.
Nokia, Microsoft, Sony Ericsson and others believe a strong musical offering - unlike ring tones and other essentially cosmetic downloads - has the potential to win over new customers for mobile networks and the handset brands they offer. -- AP
No comments:
Post a Comment