Omnifone unveils rival to iPhone, iTunes
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Omnifone, a British mobile music company, is unveiling a new music service Monday aimed at cell phone users who crave music while on the go, in the first of what is expected to be many challenges against Apple Inc.'s upcoming iPhone and its ubiquitous iTunes Store.
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Microsoft&#39;s online music store, known as MSN Music store, is being hailed as the most capable competitor to the iTunes Music Store of California&#39;s Apple.
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(InfoWorld) - Vodafone Group plans to launch several phones for holiday shoppers in Europe, including a high-end, touch-screen rival toÂ Apple's iPhone. The British mobile phone operator has an exclusive agreement to offer theÂ F700 smartphone from Samsung Electronics, said Jens Schulte-Bokum, head of the global terminal division at Vodafone. The F700 is based on proprietary technology developed by Samsung. The phone, which Vodafone plans to customize and co-brand, has been referred to by industry pundits as an "iPhone killer." The F700 has touch-screen capabilities and plays audio and video files. But unlike the iPhone, the device has a pull-down QWERTY keyboard and support for 3G (third-generation) and HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), which has speeds theoretically as high as 7.2Mbps. Schulte-Bokum declined to comment on whether Vodafone has plans to offer the iPhone, whichÂ Apple expects to launch in EuropeÂ in the coming weeks, although he did comment on its lack of 3G capability. "We like the iPhone. We think it's a unique user experience and we applaud Apple for what they're doing in the industry as a new starter," he said. "But we regret that the iPhone, initially, won't support 3G, which we believe is necessary to deliver a compelling music and Internet experience." Of the more than 25 new handsets, including the F700, that Vodafone will launch ahead of the important holiday shopping season, 13 will support HSDPA. All of the planned new handsets will be 3G-enabled. No pricing information was available. Phones will be available beginning later this month, but a schedule of exactly which phones will be released and when was not provided. Vodafone will introduce two handsets using the Windows Mobile operating system: the Vodafone-branded 920, which is manufactured by Taiwan's High Tech Computer (HTC); and the co-branded i620v from Samsung. In addition to Windows Mobile phones, the South Korean manufacturer will also deliver two new handsets based on the Series 60 platform from Nokia. The Vodafone manager also declined to comment on whether Vodafone, which had an exclusive agreement to launch Palm's Treo smartphone in Europe, would offer a new version of the phone, to be announced on Wednesday. "We are still in discussions with Palm to refresh that lineup," Schulte-Bokum said. Palm also declined to comment. Also missing from the pre-holiday product launch are handsets based on the Linux operating system. "We expect to offer Linux-based phones, but not until spring or early summer of 2008," Schulte-Bokum said, adding that the company is a founding member of the LiMo initiative, which aims to push the standardization and adoption of the open-source operating system on mobile phones. In addition to the new handsets, Vodafone also plans to offer MusicStation, the music download service provided by Omnifone Ltd. Initially available only in the U.K., MusicStation will offer customers unlimited music downloads of more than 1 million titles directly to the internal memory or storage cards on their handsets for Â£1.99 ($4.03 ) per week, said Tim Yates, chief marketing officer of Vodafone UK. To keep prices low, Vodafone has chosen to limit service and not allow users to copy downloaded tunes to other devices, such as PCs, according to Al Russel, head of content services at Vodafone UK. Vodafone plans a premium service that, for an additional fee, will allow users to synchronize the content on their handsets with their PCs, he said.
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Sony Ericsson has launched a shot across Apple's bow with its Experia X1 multimedia cell phone. Announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, the X1 features a three-inch VGA touch screen, an arc slider and a full keyboard. It supports the fast 3G networks HSDPA/HSUPA, as well as slower EDGE and GSM networks, and it supports WiFi. The X1 weighs 5.1 oz.
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Handset-to-handset fighting Whenever a single monolithic company has launched against the globe spanning iTunes, Apple has been able to move the goalposts and push further and further towards a monopolistic market share of online music, but this week a genuine challenge has emerged, one that we are certain will dent the success of Apple, and we suspect that it will be reflected in the companyâs share price before too long.â¦
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1+(smarterThanYou) writes &quot;Forbes.com has an article with updates on the previous Slashdot story on the Motorola/Apple iTunes compatible mobile phone.
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British telecoms company Omnifone on Thursday launched MusicStation, a new music download service for mobile phone users in Sweden, beating Apple&#39;s iPhone to the global marketplace by two weeks.
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Nokia is making moves on Apple in more ways than one. While its latest rendition of the N95 mobile device debuted as a so-called iPhone killer, its Ovi Internet services are launching as a formidable iTunes competitor.
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Company hopes that the rival to Apple's iTunes will make draw visitors to MSN website.
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Nokia Corp. , the world's dominant cellphone maker, is positioning itself to compete against the likes of MySpace, iTunes, and Google, and is anchoring a key part of its new business in the Back Bay.
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Vodafone is targeting the iPod generation with its third-generation cell phones, putting music and video downloading at the heart of its sales push.
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In a deal aimed at rivaling Appleâs iTunes and Nokiaâs Ovi, Sony Ericsson will offer more than five million music tracks on it PlayNow Internet and mobile phone service.
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âThe phone is so sleek and thin,â reports David Pogue (New York Times) in his review of iPhone, that âit makes Treos and Blackberrys look obese.â And the software transcends. âItâs fast, beautiful, menu-free, and dead simple to operate.â If you need âto answer a call, you can tap Answer on the screen, or pinch the microscopic microphone bulge on the white earbud cord. Either way, music or video playback pauses until you hang up.â As for email, itâs âfantastic. Incoming messages are fully formatted, complete with graphics; you can even open (but not edit) Word, Excel and PDF documents.â And âthe Web browser,â he points out, âis the real dazzler.â No âstripped down, claustrophobic My First Cellphone Browser; you get full Web layouts, fonts and all, shrunk to fit the screen. You scroll with a fingertip â much faster than scroll bars. You can double-tap to enlarge a block of text for reading, or rotate the screen 90 degrees, which rotates and magnifies the image to fill the wider view.â In short, Pogue calls the iPhone, âthe most sophisticated, outlook-changing piece of electronics to come along in years.â
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Digital music download service eMusic is  launching across Europe on Tuesday in a bid to become the top  alternative to market leader iTunes, the same distinction it  holds in the United States.
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Vodafone on Monday geared itself up for the launch of Apple&#39;s iPhone in the UK by unveiling its range of mobile phones for the all-important Christmas market and an &quot;all you can eat&quot; music download service.
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The mobile carrier aims to compete against Apple with its own music downloading service
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Melodeo beats iPhone to by launching NuTsie beta service featuring iTunes for cell phones.