Apple and Motorola are hinting that they will officially unveil a mobile phone version of iTunes in January, completely bypassing carriers.
Making good on an earlier promise, Apple and Motorola are hinting that January's MacWorld Expo could include the launch of an Apple iTunes media player for Motorola mobile phones, Forbes is reporting.
The companies previously announced in July that they were developing such an application, which would become standard on Motorola mobile phones. That would allow users to transfer songs downloaded from Apple's iTunes Music Service (iTMS) to their mobile phone and play them while on the road. The first phone including such capability would be a mid-range mass market phone rather than a $500 USD class phone, according to Apple.
Any such application requires the cooperation of Apple, as music purchased through iTMS includes so-called "Digital Rights Management" features that prevent programs from playing or copying the files without Apple's permission. Such mechanisms are favored by the major record labels, but often opposed by consumer advocacy groups. Nonetheless, iTMS is far and away the most popular online music store with over 200 million downloads. The ability to play those files on Motorola mobile phones is a big win for the phone maker, who recently slipped from the number two to number three handset maker worldwide.
iTunes for Motorola phones could still face significant hurdles, however. The program would likely bypass the phone's wireless connection completely, and with it the mobile carrier. Mobile carriers prefer any data transfers to go through their network, incurring data transfer costs, and because they have an effective monopoly in most cases on what phones are on their network are able to torpedo features they dislike. Verizon Wireless recently forced Motorola to remove certain Bluetooth features from the Motorola V710 handset in order to keep users from transferring data off of the phone, and it is unclear if they will use the same leverage to keep users from transferring data, such as iTunes audio files, onto the phone as well.
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