Sprint plans to launch the music-over-mobile market
640699
Donât search your stocking for that rumored iPod phone among this yearâs Christmas booty. Selling songs over cellular is a heated market, but early adopters of music-over-mobile (MoM) will have to start with the basics.
147177
(InfoWorld) - The groundwork is being laid for a risky experiment in consumer electronics as manufacturers prepare for Sprint Nextel and Clearwire's Xohm WiMax service. Motorola unveiled a WiMax client chipset on Tuesday and praised Sprint's strategy of leaving WiMax clients to device makers and retailers. But that plan, a change of pace from U.S. carriers' usual practice of selling and subsidizing phones themselves, could take years to pay off in the mass market. The chipset, introduced at WiMax World USA in Chicago, is small, economical, and more power-efficient than 3G platforms, according to Gary Koerper, Motorola's vice president of platform planning and architecture. It will hit the market in client devices in the second half of 2008, with the company initially focusing on building WiMax phones that carry its own brand, he said. The devices will be offered for various WiMax services around the world, including Xohm. With Xohm, Motorola will have free rein to make whatever kind of device it wants as long as it's certified to work on the carrier's network, Koerper said. Motorola calls that great news, but some observers see a hard road ahead with device makers or carriers pushing an alternative to carrier-subsidized phones. "The model Sprint is pursuing is really taking the shackles off Motorola innovation and Motorola's brand," Koerper said. Typically, the world's second-largest mobile phone maker has to develop a new product and then get a carrier to buy in on it. With WiMax devices designed to work with Xohm, Motorola can look straight to the consumer and build what they want. This could make it easier for Motorola to compete with Apple's hot iPhone, he said. Apple's product has stolen the thunder from Motorola's popular Razr line even though it commands a full, unsubsidized price. Sprint's whole WiMax initiative is a risky bid to gain an edge in the U.S. mobile market, where Sprint is in third place by subscribers. The technology promises a fat pipe to the Internet that subscribers can take with them all over a metropolitan area. Motorola said its chipset offers 10Mbps downstream and 3 to 4Mbps upstream, far faster than current 3G and comparable to a cable modem. But it will take more than fast Internet access to attract and keep paying customers, said Albert Lin, an analyst at American Technology Research. There are other ways to get fast data service, and there will be more in the future, so Sprint needs to create attractive services such as a VoIP application, high-quality video content, and easy tools for professionals to access corporate networks over VPNs, Lin said. Ease of use, support, and coverage will also be key because cellular services already have those established, he added. "You don't automatically get hundreds of thousands of early adopters," Lin said. The lack of a subsidy isn't even the biggest concern for vendors trying to sell devices for such a service, but it is a long-term problem, he said. Although down from about 95 percent a few years ago, the percentage of phones sold with subsidies in the U.S. is still 85 percent or more, according to Lin. Worldwide, about half of all cell phones are sold with subsidies, he said. As people look for more special features on their phones, they are looking outside of carriers' offerings more often, but it will be three years before the average U.S. consumer will want an unsubsidized phone, Lin predicted. Len Lauer, an executive vice president at mobile technology giant Qualcomm, was also pessimistic in an interview earlier this year. He doesn't think the mobile industry can be transformed by new strategies like Sprint's nor by the any-device, any-service band planned for the 700MHz wireless spectrum to be auctioned next year. U.S. consumers are too addicted to subsidies to buy many devices sold outside the carrier channel, said Lauer, a former Sprint executive. Motorola is pitching its chipset as competitive with 3G instead of an expensive, futuristic new technology. The cost of the chipset is already low and will keep falling to the point that Motorola could soon bring the chipset to inexpensive phones to be used primarily for voice in developing markets, Koerper said. The chipset, consisting of a baseband modem and a radio reference design, has been tested and verified with WiMax network infrastructure from Motorola and other leading vendors, the company said.
657567
The Music Choice service will come as part of an overall Sprint Multimedia package that also includes access to headlines, sports and entertainment clips, picture mail and text messaging, for $25 per month.
258869
Sprint said Wednesday that it is offering personalized streaming radio channels through a partnership with Pandora. Service will cost $2.99 per month.
520407
InfoWorld - A U.K. startup hopes to compete with&#160;Apple&#39;s new iPhone by offering a flat-rate music service that can run on most of today&#39;s mobile phones.
234247
UK-based mobile music company Omnifone has launched MusicStation, a next-generation mobile phone music service that will be deployed in partnership with music labels such as Universal Music and 23 initial global mobile operators.
592619
Sprint and Apple announced that the Xserve G5 and QuickTime have been certified as mobile multimedia delivery platforms for Sprint&#146;s new PCS Vision Multimedia Services. [Aug 26]
29844
Sprint Nextel and its hardware partners sought to convince a small audience at the Consumer Electronics Show that their WiMax plans are on track, despite the recent departure of Sprint&#39;s CEO and the dissolution of its partnership with Clearwire.&quot;We are exactly where we said we&#39;d be,&quot; said Barry West, Sprint Nextel&#39;s CTO and president of the company&#39;s Xohm WiMax business unit. Sprint is in the process of soft-launching in Chicago and Baltimore, he said.Executives from Nokia and Samsung said they both expect to have user devices ready for the second-quarter launch. In addition, Motorola said it is working on a device that will operate over Sprint&#39;s EvDO (evolution, data optimized) cellular network, Wi-Fi, and WiMax.Since the&#160;ouster of Gary Forsee, the former CEO and chairman of Sprint Nextel, who was thought to be a champion of the company&#39;s WiMax plans, onlookers have speculated that the network might not roll out as planned. In addition,&#160;Sprint Nextel ended a partnership with Clearwire&#160;to jointly deploy WiMax, a further cause for uncertainty. Sprint has been hemorrhaging mobile subscribers and recording declining revenues since its purchase of Nextel.Beyond the unrest internally at Sprint, the company faces critics of WiMax who say that the technology won&#39;t work as well as cellular technologies in a mobile environment and that it won&#39;t support international roaming as easily as the cellular standards.But in describing the reasons why Sprint chose WiMax and why it intends to aggressively pursue the network, West further sought to soothe market qualms about the future.&quot;Being first to market is a huge advantage,&quot; he said. &quot;And WiMax technology is here, now, and mature.&quot;While an investment in a totally new technology requires a strong reason for change, this won&#39;t be the first time Sprint&#39;s doing it, he noted. WiMax doesn&#39;t follow on the upgrade path for CDMA, the basis for Sprint&#39;s cellular network, so it requires a totally new network.Sprint did that first when it moved from an analog cellular network to digital, West said. The same went for the move to third-generation technology, although in that case Sprint stuck with the CDMA path.Sprint also considered LTE (Long Term Evolution), a fourth-generation mobile technology, but one big disadvantage is that it&#39;s not yet available, he said.Moving to WiMax represents a shift to a new air interface technology: OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) instead of CDMA, which is the basis of the current 3G technologies. According to West, when CDMA is deployed in a wider section of spectrum, which helps boost throughput, the computational complexity required goes up exponentially. That requires higher-performance chips, which come with a steep price tag, he said.With WiMax, Sprint plans to use a wide section of spectrum that can dynamically switch from carrying data up or down, depending on user requirements, he said.Beyond the radically different network technology, Sprint envisions a very different business model than cellular, one that will support any kind of standard device.&quot;Look at the cellular model. It was very successful but also very frustrating,&quot; West said. He was referring to the business model in the United States where operators subsidize phones and then require long-term subscriptions from users.With Xohm, Sprint will allow any WiMax-compliant device to run on the network, he said. End-users will buy the devices themselves, probably at a variety of retail stores and hopefully for a low price because vendors expect the cost of WiMax chips to drop dramatically, like Wi-Fi. &quot;Since I&#39;ve got no money in you, I don&#39;t need a contract,&quot; West said. That opens the door to a wide array of new pricing scenarios. End-users could pay for the day, week, month, or on a regular subscription, he said.While West declined to cite specific prices, he said a monthly subscription to Xohm will be comparable to existing DSL rates.Initially, Sprint will sell PC cards and modems, but by the end of this year as many as&#160;10 different kinds of devices could be available, he said. Navigation and gaming devices are possibilities, he said.If the market has any doubts about Sprint&#39;s plans for the network, it should rest assured that, regardless, the future of WiMax is more certain, panelists said. &quot;WiMax is bigger than Sprint,&quot; said Sriram Viswanathan, vice president and general manager for Intel Capital and for Intel&#39;s WiMax business.Motorola alone has 17 contracts for networks and is involved in 60 trials, said Fred Wright, senior vice president and general manager at Motorola. &quot;This technology is real, it&#39;s not a fairy tale,&quot; he said.
441370
Melodeo CEO Bill Valenti said: &quot;There&#39;s no denying the market potential for music delivered to mobile phones. In 2003, there were approximately 526 million wireless phones sold.
19975
Sprint, the fourth-largest US cell phone operator, has started a $3 billion network upgrade, with $1 billion earmarked for a wireless broadband service to launch soon in selected cities, a Sprint executive said Tuesday.
720726
Telecom network operator Sprint (Quote, Chart) will provide VoIP services to cable operator Mediacom Communications under a multi-year deal announced today.
407346
Sprint said on Tuesday it has entered into a distribution agreement with Disney subsidiary Buena Vista, Lionsgate, Sony Pictures, and Universal to distribute a select group of generally family-friendly movies through a subscription-based on-demand service, for viewing over Sprint cell phones.
544384
A new music service called FlyTunes is making a bid for the attention of users of the iPhone, iPod touch and other portable media players and media-ready cell phones.
247114
(InfoWorld) - Sprint Nextel plans to cooperate with enterprises on the rollout of its WiMax mobile broadband network, letting the customers install and own short-range base stations in their buildings with automatic roaming onto the carrier's WiMax network outside. Enterprises will be a big market for the WiMax service, said Atish Gude, senior vice president of mobile broadband operations at Sprint, in an interview Wednesday at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. The service, planned for a national rollout next year under the Xohm brand name, is designed to deliver Internet access at megabits per second on a standards-based technology that has been heavily promoted by Intel. For enterprises, it will be similar to Wi-Fi, only more secure and with easy roaming onto a carrier network that spans whole metropolitan areas, Gude said. Sprint has sent out an RFP (request for proposals) for WiMax femtocells, or miniature base stations meant to serve a home or other small area, Gude confirmed. He expects large enterprises to buy and deploy femtocells for consistent coverage across their offices and campuses, maintaining control over them as they do with current Wi-Fi networks. Sprint will work with enterprises and building owners to provide roaming onto the carrier network from WiMax femtocells or, in some cases, indoor Wi-Fi networks, he said. The small cells won't be needed in homes because the main network will be able to deliver good in-home coverage by itself, according to Gude. Earlier this week, Sprint started selling femtocells for its CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access) phone network in a trial rollout aimed at homes. The carrier and its partner, wireless broadband company Clearwire, will run Xohm on licensed spectrum but plan a business model far different from that of 3G mobile data offerings. Customers will be able to use Xohm for any type of application on the Internet, and client devices will be sold at retail stores without the subsidies mobile operators typically provide for phones. The technology could be included in a wide range of devices including handhelds, cameras, and even cars, the companies said. WiMax will go into future notebooks through Intel's Echo Peak chipset, a module for the company's next-generation Montevina platform for notebooks, which Intel announced Wednesday. Lenovo, Toshiba, Acer, and other manufacturers have said they will include WiMax in notebooks in 2008, according to Intel. Montevina notebooks are to hit the market in May. Although WiMax devices will be up against 3G products that are subsidized by carriers, the ability to buy the device separately from the service will be a real advantage, Insight64 analyst Nathan Brookwood said. Consumers don't like having to sign up for a two-year mobile plan as they typically do in the U.S. before they even know whether the carrier's service works in their homes. And notebooks, for example, sell without subsidies today, he pointed out. Xohm will be sold in a variety of ways, including monthly subscriptions, short on-the-spot purchases and "try-and-buy" offers with a period of free service, the companies said. They haven't disclosed pricing. Together, Sprint and Clearwire plan to reach 100 million U.S. residents next year, in about 30 markets including some small cities. Sprint plans to have trials in place in Chicago and the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., area by the end of this year. Clearwire already has a pre-standard network with about 300,000 customers across the country and plans to deploy standard mobile WiMax in the Portland, Oregon, area in the first half of next year. It is running a trial there now.
57929
Sprint (NYSE: FON) is taking its mobile-data services to the next level, targeting both consumers and business customers, as the carrier rolls out the Sprint TV multimedia service and adds the popular  BlackBerry e-mail application to its portfolio.
317684
A new music service that allows  consumers to directly download an unlimited number of tracks to  their mobile phones for a small weekly fee from wherever they  are will launch in Europe on Thursday.
300343
Sprint is considering options such as spinning off its WiMAX business and taking on partners in an effort fimd its nationwide wireless broadband network.