iTunes Competitors Line Up (Samsung, Sprint)

The Korea Times reports that Samsung is currently in talks with their partners to "debute a service program like iTunes of Apple. Our No. 1 priority is to help customers use our products with ease".

Ironically, Samsung is the company which is supplying Apple with the NAND Flash memory for the iPod nano.

Meanwhile, Sprint Nextel has launched the first US music download service aimed at mobile phone users.

The Sprint Music Store enables Sprint customers to download songs for $2.50/each. Sprint has lined up 250,000 songs from all four major music labels. For $2.50, customers get both a lower-quality phone version as well as the high-quality (WMA) version for their PC.

The pricing of the Sprint service, almost two-a-half-times the 99 cents that iTunes charges for a download, reflects the belief among mobile carriers that consumers will pay a premium to buy music while they are on the move, an assumption some analysts dispute.

Comparisons, of course, are made with the Motorola ROKR iTunes capable phone. As previously reported, Apple does not offer over-the-air iTunes purchasing. Instead, requiring you to copy songs over from your PC or Mac.