ORLANDO, Fla.-Sprint Nextel Corp. shook up its mobile music service to be more competitive, and announced an expansion of its joint venture with its cable partners.
The music offering includes the new Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. SPH-m620 phone, dubbed Upstage, that offers a slim form factor at 0.37 inches thick, and a dual personality. One side of the phone serves as an MP3 player with a large screen, and the other side as more a traditional phone with a sizable key pad and smaller screen. Pressing a button allows the user to switch between the two sides of the phone. The device also can access streaming radio, full- length music videos and original programming, and it will come with new Sprint Nextel music managing software for use on the customer’s computer.
Danny Bowman, vice president of customer equipment for Sprint Nextel, said that the company agonized over whether to develop its own music managing software or use another company’s, but went with its own because that option addressed issues of sideloading music and making a world-class user experience out-of-the-box. The software also will appear with future music-centric phones, company representatives said. The Upstage device allows sideloading from the user’s music library. The phone also includes an on-device tutorial that walks the user through using the phone and services.
The phone will retail for $150 with a two-year service contract. “We are taking this to another level,” Bowman said. “It’s not just about the device, it’s the way we’re going to bundle our package out of the box.”
Beginning in early April, the carrier will start charging Apple Inc. iTunes-esque prices for over-the-air downloads: 99 cents for a full-length track, which includes a track for the phone and for the computer. The price will apply across Sprint Nextel’s music catalog of more than 1 million songs.
“We really feel like we’re going to ‘upstage’ our competition,” Bowman said. “Frankly, we don’t want any reason why somebody does not want to take our products and services.”
The phone also plugs into an additional battery “wallet,” which includes a separate battery for the phone to draw power from in order to push its music playing time up to more than 16 hours and talk time up to 6.3 hours, according to the two companies.
As devices have gotten thinner, Bowman noted, the standard connections for headsets have sometimes not been included. Upstage will include an adapter that will allow the use of high-quality noise-canceling headsets, as well as a microphone so that calls can be answered while using a headset. Bluetooth caller ID is available, which Bowman described as a voice “whispering” the name or phone number of a contact into a Bluetooth stereo headset.
WiMAX cities added
In separate announcements, Sprint Nextel said that it had chosen Samsung to supply single and dual-mode WiMAX and WiMAX/CDMA2000 1x EV-DO PC cards for use on its future WiMAX network and Chinese vendor ZTE for single-mode USB cards and fixed modems.
The carrier lengthened its list of cities where it plans to initially roll out WiMAX services to include Boston; Denver; Detroit and Grand Rapids, Mich.; Indianapolis; Kansas City; Minneapolis; Philadelphia; Portland, Ore.; Providence, R.I.; Salt Lake City; and Seattle.
In addition to its music aspirations Sprint Nextel named its integrated cable television, cellular service that is being offered in a handful of markets through its partnership with cable companies.
Sprint Nextel said the service, dubbed Pivot, allows customers to watch live mobile television, access TV listings using a programming guide, check home e-mail and voicemail from one source, access the Internet, place unlimited calls between their cable home service and mobile phones, and one point for customer care and billing.
The carrier didn’t divulge pricing, but said it was available in eight cities-Raleigh, N.C.; Austin, Texas; Boston; Portland; San Diego; Phoenix; Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio, and would be in 40 markets by the end of the year.
