Mobile devices Toolkit

Post a comment

Story: Is Apple driving music to mobiles?

I have been reading similar articles between Apple and Carriers, but the fact is the view of the carriers are all very US centric where the phones are largely subsidized by the carrier. The carriers seem bent on recovering their misguided investments in data services, in anticipation of an explosion that did not happen.
As usual the rest of the world is ignored, which is a far bigger phone market, with the following characteristics.
* a far higher phone-change rate, an average is about one new phone a year in Asia. Barring Motorola every large phone manufacturer is from Europe or Japan/Korea.
* phones are not typically subsidized, except as part of loyalty program or to rid of obsolete models. We are speaking of less than 5% here.
* largest markets in Asia are way ahead of US in mobile phone technology - handsets, services, features etc. The markets are Japan, S.Korea.
* Fastest growing markets - China, India.
* Penetration levels are very high with many now adopting dual phones (biz + personal).
Let us face it, US is only a minority in the global cell phone market and the carrier business models outside of the US is very different.
To let the cat among pigeons, one of the following could upset the plans of these greedy US carriers
* Phone makers address a larger market and if there is a adoption for iTunes phone elsewhere, which is certain to happen, happenings in US is irrelevant
* An opportunistic carrier can use the iTunes phone to get new customers. With phone number portability, am hoping this will not be a big impediment
* Apple has demonstrated their understanding of the music business, with a resounding success of the iPod+iTunes+iTMS. Carriers are at the other end of their spectrum, they are best at confusing (call rate plans)
In digital-home future, the cell-phone is only one entity.
The others being a computer, home media server, portable music player, car audio etc. are the other pieces which a company such as Apple can address.
So, the choice is up to the music labels if they want to side with someone with larger game-plan or just a one-trick pony.

Full Talkback thread