WIRED: The ROKR is a failure
Wowzers. Have you checked out WIRED Magazine’s November cover story by Frank Rose? It’s an epic four page story as to why the ROKR, Motorola and Apple’s first iTunes phone is going down for the count - and we’re barely through round one in the battle of digital music player phones. “Consumers want an iPod phone that will play any song, anytime, anywhere. Just four little problems: the cell carriers, the record labels, the handset makers, and Apple itself.”
Man oh man, I knew it! A lot of people have discussed how the iTunes software has made a lot of digital music organizing easier. Fact of the matter is, it also takes good hardware (an iPod) and a huge support service (the iTunes Music Store) to keep the music playing. The ROKR only offered one out of three innovations - yeah it did have iTunes, but it was so hard to switch from phone to music. Yes it could play music, but it didn’t support OTA (over the air) downloading. Think of what a treat that would have been to access the iTMS from anywhere.
So although the two companies were superficially aligned, in fact their ambitions were diametrically opposed: Motorola dreamed of bringing the iPod to the cell phone-buying masses, while Apple sought to protect the iPod from them.
Check out the full story here at WIRED Online
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POSTED IN: Mobile Monitor, Phones, Phones, Phones
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