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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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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The wide variety of operating systems on mobile phones is hindering the growth of cool mobile Internet applications, according to Arun Sarin, CEO of network operator Vodafone.The success of a mobile Internet application can be influenced by how easy it is to develop for a particular software platform, and how attractive the resulting application is to use.&quot;The first imperative for us is world-class user experience,&quot; Sarin said in the opening keynote session of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Tuesday.&quot;The easier the interface, the more you use it and the more you get onto the Internet.&quot;Mobile phone operating systems are key to that experience, he said, but there are too many of them: as many as 30 or 40, Sarin estimated.&quot;We have to reduce that number. There&#39;s no way that developers of cool applications can develop for that many operating systems. If we had three, four, five, that would be better,&quot; he said.&quot;Note, I didn&#39;t say one!&quot; he said, with a nod to the market for PC operating systems. &quot;We&#39;ve seen that movie before.&quot;One reason for the proliferation of mobile phone operating systems is that, historically, handset suppliers offered their own proprietary code to make the best use of their phones&#39; limited processing and memory resources. Developing applications for such closed systems is difficult.Today&#39;s high-end phones, though, have as much computing power as low-end PCs, spawning a new market for operating systems such as Symbian OS or Windows Mobile that run on phones from multiple manufacturers.That ought to reduce the number of software platforms in the market, but more are still arriving, including several based on the open source operating system Linux.Vodafone distributes and supports phones with many different operating systems, but not the one that for Sarin proved the importance of the operating system: Apple&#39;s iPhone.&quot;Apple has raised the bar with the iPhone, and we all now know how important user interfaces are,&quot; he said. &quot;We as an industry will have to raise our game to provide the kind of user interface that our customers are now becoming accustomed to.&quot;Apple changed the market with slick software and a closed design tied to its own hardware, initially making it difficult for developers to add applications. The company plans to open things up a little with the release of a software development kit (SDK) later this month.Another new arrival in the mobile phone operating system market is Google, which hopes to change the market with a different approach: making it easy to build and use compelling mobile Web applications.Google began by releasing the software development kit for&#160;Android, an application framework built on a Linux base, and founded an industry group, Open Hardware Alliance, to encourage its use. Several chip makers are&#160;demonstrating prototype phones running Android&#160;in Barcelona this week, and Google hopes that manufacturers will release handsets based on the software later this year.Naturally, Google hopes to profit from this move by driving greater use of its services on the Web. But other companies will benefit too, if their sites are usable by more phone owners.For Sarin, that&#39;s good news too: more Internet use means more revenue-generating data traffic on his network.
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Nokia launches a music download service that challenges both rival handset makers and network providers.
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again - with a tech rival Thursday, unveiling MSN Music to challenge Apple Computer&#39;s dominant iTunes Music Store. MSN Music debuted with 500,000
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Vodafone Group Plc unveiled a range of  new handsets and services for the key Christmas period on  Monday including an exclusive music service offering unlimited  tracks, to challenge the iPhone in Britain.
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The next great mobile hope for Linux, the Neo1973, has arrived. Wired News has a first look at the most promising open source alternative to the iPhone.
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Nova media has announced Fone2Phone for Mac OS X, a new utility that moves data from an "ordinary" cell phone to the iPhone or iPod.
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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.
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(InfoWorld) - So much for Apple Inc. raising the bar in the mobile phone industry. Since Apple announced it would soon start selling a combined music player and mobile device called the iPhone, industry experts have predicted that competing cell phone makers would rise to the challenge and start producing equally exciting phones. They may yet do that, but so far they haven't. I took a quick stroll around the show floor of the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona checking out the music phones from some of the biggest handset makers out there to see if anything might compare to the hype aroundÂ expectations for the iPhone. Apple is known for great hardware designs and simple, intuitive user interfaces. While I saw a dizzying array of form factors and a multitude of user interface styles, I was unimpressed with the hardware I saw and downright confounded by the complexity of all the user interfaces. My examinations were quick -- the show floor is incredibly crowded and hot, so sometimes it took some sharp elbows to even get to touch a phone. I took a brief look at the overall form factor of the phones and then did some navigating around the music player. I started out at the Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB booth, perhaps because I know the company has been pushing its Walkman handsets. The W880 is a really nice looking phone. It's incredibly thin and has unusual raised keys that work nicely. Sony Ericsson gets high marks for the hardware form factor on this one, but the software user interface was a different story. I never did manage to find the music player from the home screen. Ultimately, I just moved along to another phone in the display area that was already running the music player. I had a similar navigation problem on Nokia Corp.'s 5200 music phone. From the home screen, I clicked on an icon with a music note in it, which seemed a logical place to launch the music player. But that took me to a music-related game. I scrolled and scrolled through a horizontal bar of icons but didn't find a music player there. Then I noticed that floating in the middle of the screen were two long bars: one for the music player and one for the calendar. That threw me -- of all phone functions, why were the music player and calendar the only two to be presented that way? At least Nokia had loaded the demonstration phones with music. Some of the other handsets I tried out, such as the Sony Ericsson one, had just one song on them. That makes it difficult to get a feel for navigating around the music player. I don't love the form factor of the 5200 but I think some people might. It's sporty, in white and bright red, and a shape reminiscent of Motorola Inc.'s PEBL phones. It slides open. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.'s SG HF300 "Ultramusic" was next up. I couldn't help but be struck by the cool design. One side of the phone is nearly all screen; the flip side has a keypad for dialing the phone. I never managed to figure out how to use the control panel on the music player side of the phone. It looks like the iPod's but square. I don't have an iPod so maybe iPod users can easily figure it out. If you're not an iPod user -- and you may not be if you're in the market for a music phone -- the SG HF300 might require a steep learning curve. Motorola was next in line. I'm probably least impressed with the Z8 than any of the others. I think the design is clunky and looks and feels like a slider phone from a couple of years ago. For the innovator of the thin phone, Motorola should have done better with the Z8's size. I found it difficult to figure out which buttons corresponded with the words at the bottom of the screen so even hitting "back" proved difficult initially. Then, when looking for the music player application, I suddenly found an error message on the screen and the phone froze. Not a great sign. My final stop was Neonode AB, a Swedish company that has been touting its music phone, particularly its touch screen. The device is in a category of its own and is very un-phone like. About the size of a business card, though not as thin, its touch screen definitely requires training to use. I would have never been able to figure it out without instruction. Users sweep up along the home screen within three columns. The first opens a navigation page with icons for functions such as the music player, calendar and calculator. The middle column opens a touch pad for dialing calls. And the final column opens a tools menu. Sweeping left along the screen goes back a page and sweeping right opens a function that is highlighted. When presented with a list such as albums, you touch the item to highlight it and then touch the middle of the screen to open. Sound confusing? It was. Still, I'm not panning it. It may require a bit of direction and practice but I think it'd be pretty easy to get the hang of how it works. While the small size was attractive, it also meant that it felt a bit designed for a child. Most adults have fingertips that are bigger than the icons on the screen. Overall, I was largely underwhelmed with my experiences. But there's time -- Apple only just announced the iPhone and its competitors haven't really had time to respond. Also, my search was by no means exhaustive. For example, I didn't make it to LG Electronics Inc., which recently unveiled a phone, the KE850, that is being compared to the iPhone. Even at the booths I visited, I chose to look at the phone that appeared to me to be the most focused on music but that may not be the one the manufacturer would direct me to and other models may compare more directly with the iPhone. And finally, I'm the first to admit my exercise was a bit silly given that I've never even seen an iPhone. But such is the power of the Apple marketing machine.
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Eyeing the success of Apple's iPod and its iTunes music service, the mobile phone industry is betting on music downloads as a way of boosting revenues from the faster "3G" networks and handsets now becoming widely available.
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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.
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Apple has declared itself &quot;very happy&quot; with Motorola&#39;s attempt to build an iPod-style mobile phone that can play songs downloaded from its iTunes Music Store.
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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 plans to launch several phones targeting holiday shoppers in Europe, including a high-end, touch-screen rival to the iPhone.
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Baby steps Hands on I'll admit it. I'm an unashamed fan of the iPhone. I had an unlocked device in the UK running on my cheapskate Vodafone tariff before November's official launch.â¦
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The Washington Post&#39;s Rob Pegoraro says that Microsoft&#39;s new MSN Music store is the most capable iTunes competitor, but that it falls &quot;just short&quot; of Apple&#39;s offering.