«Cingular» aposta na oferta de música

A empresa líder no mercado de telemóveis nos EUA está apostada em oferecer múltiplos serviços de música aos seus clientes. Assim, além de ter garantido canais de música da XM, anunciou também que:

«With cellphones the next battleground for digital music, No. 1 wireless carrier Cingular will announce a new twist Thursday: phones that can work with online subscription services from Yahoo, Napster and eMusic. Cingular will introduce several new phones. Unlike music stores from Sprint and Verizon, which sell songs a la carte, Cingular will offer unlimited music transfers to subscribers of Napster and Yahoo "to-go" programs. The songs expire if the subscriptions aren't renewed. Songs sold at eMusic aren't copy-protected and don't expire. They will work with new and existing phones from Cingular. Pricing at most subscription services ranges from $10 to $15 a month. Sprint says it has sold 8 million songs since opening its music store in late 2005. Verizon says it sells 1 million songs monthly. Apple, which dominates digital music, has sold 1.5 billion songs since the iTunes Store opened in 2003.

Cellphone subscribers mostly have stayed away from mobile music because of the higher prices charged by the carriers, says Kevin Nolan, an analyst at researcher Strategy Analytics.  Apple sells songs for 99 cents each, compared with $2.50 for Sprint and $1.99 for Verizon. Nolan says subscription music will catch on with mobile customers because it will be perceived as a better value. "It should really kick-start volume," he says.

Cingular was the first carrier to enter the mobile music market, aligning with Apple to offer Motorola's iTunes-compatible Rokr phone. Subscribers can't buy songs over the air but can transfer songs from iTunes to the phone itself. The Cingular alliances with the music services will also require PC transfers. The Rokr was poorly reviewed, and analysts expect Apple to eventually release an iPod phone. Cingular spokesman Mark Siegel declined to give further details about the phones or financial terms. He says the company still views Apple as an "important partner." "We are the first and only wireless company to offer iTunes," he says. Phil Leigh, an analyst at Inside Digital Media, says Apple has nothing to fear from Cingular's new music strategy. "The iPod is popular because people love the idea of being able to carry around your entire library. Phones have limited capacities," he says. Most cellphones work with MicroSD storage cards. The largest-capacity cards are 1 gigabyte, while the biggest iPod has an 80-GB hard drive.»

fonte: USA Today, «Cingular opens phone network to other music services», 1/11/06, Jefferson Graham