Cingular will team up with online music services such as Napster, Yahoo Music and eMusic, to launch a music service on its cellphone network, the Wall Street Journal is reporting.
According to the WSJ report, Cingular’s service initially will support transferring music from personal computers to cellphones via a cable. Users will be able to transfer music acquired from subscription services, but will be able to transfer songs from CDs or downloaded in the MP3 and Windows Media formats.
Full article (subscription required) here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “teflon” for the heads up.]
Scratch Cingular off the list of possible “iPhone” carriers.
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Riiiiight. Good luck with that.
Wireless carriers make an obscene killing off of ringtones. iTunes is a threat to all that feasting on the stupid…
I think Apple will start in Europe and Asia since the mobile phone network is far more developed than in the States. So, who will it be, Vodafone?
Bet Cingular has more luck than Verizon & Sprint are having with their proprietary non-iTunes, non-WMA, non-MP3, non-computer connected, more expensive than anyone else, music stores.
so thats it, apple’s iphone is gonna be an mvno…
Though I generally don’t buy music anywhere but iTunes, I really, really like eMusic. It’s cheap, it’s cheerful, it’s vaguely subversive, it’s DRM-free, and it shows that the subscription model can work, when not crippled by too many restrictions. Just a pity the labels don’t see it that way.
CRAP! Cingular is my carrier, and I’m not likely to change! Crap!
i am currently a cingular customer, and was hoping to just get the iphone with little hassel, and be done…
now im gonna have to switch carriers and switch phones.
I still think Apple will be going “solo”, ala Amp’d or Helio or Virgin Mobile
I was further hoping that Cingular would be the base under Apple’s new cell service, but i guess it will be either Verizon or Sprint now….or could it still be Cingular?
click here to see what i (and others) are talking about
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MVNO#List_of_MVNOs
Worth noting:
In the WSJ article, Sprint revealed that they have only sold 8mm songs at $2.50 in the year since launching their download service.
Verizon declined to give numbers.
Best of luck, Cingular.
Ringtones must be such a great business to be in, charge 4, 5 or more times the cost of a full song and sell it in a lower quality. My brother wanted to get some ringtones off the internet and was genuinely amazed when I told him he could just get the song out of his iTunes library and edit it recode it to a lower quality if he wanted to save space or start from a particular point. There’s this billion dollar business (?) for which there is absolutely no need. No wonder the phone companies are wanting to get into music – they want to keep a strangelhold.
Ditto to that, hairbo.
Double crap. But when my contract is up, you can bet I’ll be looking for the companies that have an Apple phone offer in place.
Whichever network(s) DOESN’T get the iPhone…short their stock immediately for a quick win..!
I can see the conversation, some junior exec says, “but sir, what about apple, they own this market” and the chairman replies “i deny your reality and substitute my own” followed by a jedi hand wave “these are not the droids you are looking for.” Junior exec makes a mental note to let contract run out and anticpate iphone.
c’mon guys Cingular is going to be platform agnostic. They can’t announce an iPhone deal if Apple hasn’t even announced the iPhone yet. It’s all under NDA. When Apple is ready Cingular will announce support for iPhone+iTunes along with the PFS stuff. Probably the Zune Phone as well.
They’ll focus on the data services, not the content.
So it willlet you play the stuff you RENT but not the stuff you OWN. WOW, what a concept! And it’s so original! Why has no one thought of this before? Oh wait they have and they are losing their shirts. Maybe Cingular feels it will work on a phone since it doesn’t work anywherelse in the non-Pod universe of has-beens and also-rans.
Apple needs to add a button into iTunes that would allow you to create a ringtone and upload to your phone via bluetooth.
You’re all smoking something that I want to try. Must be powerful bud. And way to just throw your hands up, MDN.
Steve Jobs is on record as having stated “how great is has been working with Cingular” a la Motorola and the ROKR. That relationship will continue and prosper.
Just think about the profit model under which all parties will be bound…
THE DEAL:
Apple will be designing/building/supplying the hardware (iPhone) and the software (iTunes) to Apple’s designated provider (any or ALL of the big carriers, fellaz).
Apple’s nice profits will come through the sale of the equipment…as it does now. And the tunes…as they modestly do now.
Customers will get their tunes via iTunes and their computers…as they do now. At the start, anyway.
The carriers will be ok with this arrangement because they will benefit through the acquisition/retention of (millions of) iPod owners craving the iPhone a la the “razor and razor blade” metaphor…as they all do now.
And one must also consider the cross-marketing between all parties such an arrangement will bring — and mushroom. Haven’t ever seen anything on that magnitude yet. But we will.
It’s a no-lose situation for everyone.
As long as the new iPhone comes out with a GSM standard, even locked for one service such as T-Mobile, it will only be a matter of a few hours before unlocked versions will be available on eBay or through big mobile phone resellers. Even if it comes out in Europe, we’ll have it here within a couple of days on eBay. I’ll be right there bidding for one or two.
Hopefully, it will be out in the USA with T-Mobile (who has left itself without an MP3 solution for its phone, so it might be the best fit for Apple).
I’m just happy that Verizon may never see an iPhone compatible with its service!
Quite recently, the CEO of T-Mobile was saying VERY uncharacteristic things for a large corporation…How great Mac OSX is, how it is the most innovative OS around…soooo…Apple and T-Mobile?
This could be a great way for T-Mobile to jump-start their subscriber growth vs. the big 3.
Awh come on Apple and Cingular, working something out damn it.
T-Mobile, Peabody’s take: Most cutting edge features and mobile technology, wors reputation for service and support after sale, and if iPhone’s gonna be through T-Mobile then that will lock me completely out of any, even remote, possibility of being able to use an iPhone.
Oh well, I want to be able to use it, but on the other hand that’s less money I have to spend.
The problem Apple is having is that Phone networks just like the cable / sat companies control distribution. They want to milk it as much as possible. Apple’s model takes that leverage away.
For Apple to release an iPhone without major carriers jumping on board could be risky. Without their own MVNO they could get shut out.
At some point the network distribution may have to be opened up because carriers are using it to lock out competition.
The internet never had that problem because it was a gov’t / academic venture and open to all. Look at all the innovation that has gone on there, whereas US mobile networks are years behind their Japanese and European counterparts.
MW “control” – interesting!
Cingular has already crossed themselves off the list of potential iPhone carriers by completely ignoring Macintosh users as far as mobile internet connectivity is concerned. Cingular phones can be made to work with Macs, but Cingular offers no support, no modem scripts, no nothin’.