“Are Apple Computer and Motorola finally getting ready to launch an iTunes cell phone? The phone was set to be announced in March, but at the last minute both companies decided to delay the introduction,” Olga Kharif and Peter Burrows, with Roger Crockett, write for BusinessWeek. “Now it appears they’re ready — and they may even have signed up a service provider. In a June 23 research note, RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Sue said Cingular, a joint venture between telcos SBC and BellSouth, will announce the phone within a month.”

“The mobile phone — or rather, a family of iTune phones, ranging from low end to high end — will become available to consumers before Christmas, Sue says. That seems to jibe with Motorola’s previous assurances that the gadget will hit stores in the third quarter,” Kharif and Burrows writes. “…it looks like the deal will happen sooner, rather than later. All parties involved — Motorola, Cingular, and, perhaps most of all, Apple — have much to gain from the hookup. The move could help them take the pole position in a promising new market — delivering digital music to cell phones, a device that has become the center of the digital lifestyle for millions of people around the world.”

Full article here.

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