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Apple vs. Wireless Carriers?

According to Businessweek, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and Cingular are planning on providing music downloading services to their wireless customers later this year.

This is in direct competition to Apple's current iTunes service. The article notes that the wireless cell phone audience tops 1.4 billion customers worldwide, making it an huge market.

As a result of this, Apple has seen resistance to acceptance of iTunes enabled phones from Wireless carriers. The widely publicized Motorola iTunes phone has seen unexpected delays -- likely related to the same issues. Even so, according to the Businessweek article, Motorola does expect availability of the service (and iTunes phone) on at least one mobile phone network this summer.

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89 months ago
Mmmmmmm, Apple Wireless Carrier please
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89 months ago
Is this yet another case of Motorola holding Apple back, i wonder???
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89 months ago
If Apple spreads iTunes around then it won't loose its popularity. If it doesn't then iTunes will no longer be a standard and something else will.
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89 months ago
Music model getting alot more complicated, oh well time to shift some focus back on CPUs!!
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89 months ago
Well, whoever offers it gets my business.. for what it's worth.
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89 months ago

Is this yet another case of Motorola holding Apple back, i wonder???


no. it looks like it's wireless carries not wanting to be cut out of the $$.

arn
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89 months ago
Lemme guess. They'd rather have windoze media player. Just go with iTunes and save some research, testing dollars. You wonderful phone companies.
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89 months ago
Screw the downloads! Wheres my iPhone!
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89 months ago

Is this yet another case of Motorola holding Apple back, i wonder???


I don't think so, it mainly has to do with the iTunes service that Apple and Motorola want to roll out. The carriers won't be getting as large of a cut with the iTunes service than with their own solutions. And, the Apple/Motorola solution enables you to transfer music from your computer, which is against the carriers own ways right now. To them, if you can't transfer music, then you'll have to pay for everything, which makes them more money in the end. However, for Apple/Motorola, Apple's already making music from the iTMS, and this just broadens their horizons.
-Chase
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89 months ago
This is definitely a huge area in which Apple needs to be very involved. It should not be hard to do a Shuffle-Cell Phone. But Apple probably doesn't need to get out of it's core competence and go into cell phone manufacturing. It needs to partner. Such a partnership should be very advantageous to whichever company (ies) Apple partners with.
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