Seamless integration of Windows Media technologies will deliver complete music experience and redefine music discovery on Motorola handsets.
Motorola Inc. and Microsoft Corp., strengthened their existing relationship by announcing a collaboration to integrate Microsoft Windows Media Technologies on a number of Motorola’s new range of handset that will offer a rival system alongside its own iTunes phone developed with Apple. Users can access content from the broadest selection of online music stores from around the world.
Motorola Inc., the world’s second biggest mobile phone maker behind Nokia, will launch between one and three Windows Media phones in the second half of 2006, said Chris White, the company’s senior director of global product marketing for music handsets.
Motorola, which launched its first iTunes phones last year, will keep Windows Media phones as separate products, he said.
The iTunes phones will remain a separate line of products, White said at 3GSM, the world’s biggest mobile phone trade fair.
At stake is the emerging market for legally distributed digital music, which Apple Computer Inc. has opened with its iTunes music player. Apple has sold 1 billion tracks since iTunes launched.
Microsoft Corp. is trying to break into the digital media market with Windows Media software, which is incompatible with Apple’s, to compress, transfer and protect media.
Motorola said the new music handsets will add support for Windows Media Digital Rights Management (DRM), Windows Media Audio (WMA), the enhanced Windows Media Audio Pro codec and Media Transfer Protocol (MTP). These technologies will give consumers the maximum flexibility and options when purchasing and playing back their digital music.
Windows Media phones have been requested by many operators which want to open their own music stores. Microsoft is willing to sell technology that enables this to operators, while Apple has its iTunes music store to protect.
We are developing these “Windows Media” phones in parallel with operator requirements, White said.
The Windows Media phones will be able to download music over the air, sold by operators, and also directly from a computer. "This is important for consumers to get broader and wider access to digital content," White said.
Forthcoming Motorola music handsets will enable seamless connectivity to Windows-based PCs via the USB 2.0 high-speed protocol. By supporting MTP, Windows Media Player will automatically recognize Motorola handsets and enable users to quickly and easily sync their music from their PC to their phone. Music acquired from any pay-per-download or subscription store using Windows Media technology will transfer and playback on Motorola handsets.
In addition to making Motorola handsets interoperable with PCs, Motorola and Microsoft plan to provide mobile handset offerings that are tailored for discovering and acquiring music over an operator’s 3G network. Incorporating the efficient encoding capabilities of the WMA Pro codec, this rich music offering will provide operators with handsets optimized for efficient music downloads over a 3G network. Consumers will also benefit from quick and easy access to high quality music on the go.
Music Access:
Motorola aimed to take a bite from Apple’s digital music success when it announced more than a year ago it would start producing iTunes phones.
The iTunes phone’s bulky design and the fact that operators cannot sell and transfer songs directly to the phone also hampered its take-up.
But the resulting product has proved a mediocre success due to limited storage capacity as the phone was not allowed to compete with Apple’s popular iPod players, which can store thousands of songs and which are essential to Apple’s recent financial success.
Amir Majidimehr, who is in charge of Microsoft’s digital media activities, said the advantage for consumers is that they could now buy online songs either from a PC or a mobile phone and transfer between devices without having to buy tracks twice.
Support of mobile telecoms operators for a handset is crucial, because they choose a limited number of phones they will subsidize and offer to their subscribers — in most markets around the world only 10 to 20 percent of phones are sold in retail stores without operator subsidies.
Microsoft now has deals with both, Nokia and Motorola. These two handset makers together produced more than half of the 810 million mobile phones that were sold last year.
Our relationship with Microsoft is about making the mobile world seamless with the desktop world and allowing consumers to experience music wherever and whenever they want, said Richard Chin, corporate vice president Global Product Marketing at Motorola. Building on our existing relationship, this expanded collaboration can further enrich the mobile music experience and expand the mobile music offering to our operator alliances and consumers.
Combining Motorola’s wireless handsets with Windows Media technologies will significantly advance the mobile music experience, said Majidimehr. Motorola’s upcoming handsets with Windows Media will offer consumers and operators worldwide the widest range of high fidelity, no-compromise music choices.
Motorola began shipping Microsoft technologies on select handsets in 2005, and plans to offer Windows Media-enabled music experiences on multiple handsets worldwide in the second half of 2006. Support for over-the-air delivery capabilities and WMA Pro is expected to follow suit in 2007.
Nokia announced a deal to include Windows Media in some of its phones last year at 3GSM. Nokia has helped set up mobile phone software firm Symbian, which competes with Windows Mobile, Microsoft’s technology for handsets.
In addition to Windows Media, the Nokia phones will also contain an open standard for the transfer and protection of songs and video. Motorola said its Windows Media phones may also support this standard from the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA).
It is possible that we may support OMA. This is not an exclusive deal, White said.
The OMA standard has suffered, however, from endless haggling over licensing terms in negotiations with key patent holders that have been gridlocked for more than a year. The patents are owned by a small group of companies, including Sony Corp., Philips, Intertrust, ContentGuard and Microsoft.
More information about Motorola at 3GSM is available at http://www.motorola.com/3gsm.