“Sprint, which announced the move Monday, a day ahead of the CTIA Wireless conference, is the first of the top three mobile phone service providers to offer this price, which will go into effect in early April. It currently charges $2.49 per song,” Reuters reports.
Reuters reports, “Current Analysis analyst Avi Greengart said the price cut should help Sprint win new music customers. He said bigger rival Verizon Wireless… and Vodafone Group, would probably follow suit.”
“The move by Sprint, which also announced a slim new music-playing phone from Samsung Electronics Co., comes ahead of Apple’s launch of its iPhone in June,” Reuters reports. “One side of the Samsung phone, dubbed the Upstage, has a big screen that takes up most of the phone and keys dedicated to the music player. On the other side is a typical phone keypad and a much smaller screen.”
Reuters reports, “Greengart noted that while the Samsung phone is innovative, it is not in the same league as the iPhone. ‘It doesn’t challenge the iPhone in any shape or form,’ he said, pointing to the iPhone’s touch-screen interface with a computerlike keyboard.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Rainy Day” for the heads up.]
AppleInsider notes that the Samsung phone will cost $149 with a two-year Sprint contract and features a 64MB MicroSD memory card and over-the-air music downloads to the device from the Sprint Music Store’s library of over 1.5 million songs. Apple’s iTunes Store features more than 3.5 million songs, 65,000 free podcasts, 20,000 audiobooks, over 200 TV shows, movies, music videos, and iPod games. Apple plans to offer two iPhone models initially with 4GB and 8GB of built-in NAND flash storage for $499 and $599 respectively. AT&T Wirelss has not yet disclosed rate plans for Apple’s iPhone.
“Apple, whose iPhone is not expected until June, has not said if users will be able to download music tracks direcly to the device over ATT’s wireless network,” AppleInsider notes. For the Samsung phone, “a new Power Vision Access Pack will be available for $15 and include 10 commercial-free radio channels from Sprint Radio, exclusive video programming, and 99 cent song downloads. For $5 more per month, a Vision Music Pack will add another 40 channels of commercial-free radio channels and a a channel from Sprint TV that features music videos.”
Full article, with more details and larger images of the Samsung UpStage phone here.
This two-headed kludge won’t cause Apple to lose any sleep, but it would be nice if it prompted Cupertino to allow for over-the-air iTunes purchases and — blasphemy, we know — access to commercial-free or even just iTunes ad-supported radio would be nice.
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