Cingular Wireless L.L.C. announced it will be the exclusive U.S. vendor of Motorola Inc.’s new Rokr E1 device, the company’s long-awaited iTunes-capable phone. The device, which is available today for $250 with a two-year service plan, stores up to 100 songs from Apple Computer Inc.’s popular iTunes digital music service.
“You get to carry your music … on your phone,” said Timothy Towster, director of Cingular’s device and accessory product management operations. “It’s a great convergence of music and voice.”
Motorola’s new phone features an integrated digital camera and Bluetooth technology and ships with a 512 MB Transflash removable memory card. The card sits behind the phone’s battery.
Users can move up to 100 songs onto the phone’s memory card by connecting it to a computer with a USB cable. Although the phone is capable of holding more than 100 songs, an agreement among Apple, Motorola and Cingular ensures that users can store only up to 100 songs on the device. Apple’s $100 iPod Shuffle also features 512 MB of memory, but has no restrictions on the number of songs users can store on the device.
Cingular’s Towster defended the 100-song limit.
“One hundred songs will get you across the country” in an airplane, he said. “The market has accepted 100 songs as a market standard.”
The phone also features Apple’s digital rights management technology, which prohibits users from removing songs from the phone’s memory card.
The phone automatically stops playing music when it receives a call and will resume the music after a call. It also features an airplane mode, which turns off the phone’s wireless connection so users can listen to music on airplanes.
Users cannot set iTunes songs as their ringtones. Instead, they have to buy ringtones through Cingular. Ringtones generally cost between $1 and $3.
Interestingly, the candybar-style phone features a battery that is slightly larger than standard phone batteries. Cingular said the enlarged battery can support up to 10 hours of talking or 10 hours of listening to music.
Cingular will promote the phone with a major advertising campaign, including TV spots. The TV ads feature thin, good-looking actors walking around downtown areas listening to music on the phones. In a nod to Apple’s iPod advertisements, the actors’ silhouettes and reflections dance along with the music. They stop dancing when the phone receives a call. The ads also feature Cingular’s “raising the bar” catch phrase, but replace the bars with ascending music notes.
Cingular said initially it will not subsidize the cost of the Rokr phone. The move indicates that Cingular expects demand to be strong enough that users will pay full price for the device. Cingular used a similar strategy when it first released the Motorola Razr phone last year.
Cingular holds an exclusive sales agreement with Motorola for the Rokr phone covering the U.S. market. The agreement ends in 90 days, at which point Cingular can renew the agreement or allow Motorola to offer the phone to other carriers. Cingular held a similar agreement for Motorola’s Razr device.
Cingular currently sells 10 phones that can play digital music, including the Treo 650 from Palm Inc. and the 6230 from Nokia Corp. However, none can play songs from Apple’s iTunes service.
Music phones recently have caught the wireless industry by storm. Most handset makers are in the midst of introducing a range of music-capable devices, including those with hard drives and gigabytes of storage. Further, several carriers have acknowledged interest in selling songs over their network. Indeed, Cingular officials said the carrier likely would offer over-the-air song downloads sometime in the future.
“Definitely over the air is a possibility in the near future,” Towster said.
