Motorola CEO Claims Carriers No Barrier to iTune Phone
Ian Betteridge
The long-awaited Motorola iTunes Phone is on track for release within “a couple of months”, according to the company’s CEO Ed Zander. Zander also claimed that there was “no resistance” on the part of wireless carriers to the phone, despite a potential conflict between carrier plans to expand in the music sales market.
In a press conference Tuesday, Zander claimed he had one of the phones – dubbed the Rokr – on him, but refused to show it. “I love it,” he said, adding that he’d been “playing with it for a week or two.”
Last month, a report in BusinessWeek suggested that mobile communications companies were reluctant to carry the phone, as it would allow users to play songs bought from the iTunes Music Store. This conflicts with carrier’s plans to offer their own services, which would download songs directly to phones at a cost of between $2-3 per tune, compared to the flat-rate 99 cents of iTunes. Music Store.
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Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in ExtremeiPod.
