Microsoft/Orange Partner on Music with, er, C550?

[Guest shadamehr]

According to thebusinessibline.com, Microsoft is to partner with Orange on a Music Phone to combat the online stores. Nothing to weird there. But the key handset they plan on using is not a new affair - its the existing Music Buttons based C550...

MICROSOFT has teamed up with mobile operator Orange to try to gain control of the digital music business, which the software giant believes could be worth hundreds of billions of pounds a year.

The Business has learned that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has persuaded Orange to develop a mobile phone, the SPV C550, which will double as a Microsoft music player. Consumers will keep their music on a computer and transfer it to their mobiles. The music phone will go on sale in HMV’s flagship stores next month. HMV is using Microsoft software to run its digital music internet download service, HMV Digital Jukebox, which can be accessed by the phones.

Microsoft spokesman Jason Langridge said: “The mobile digital music market is about to take off. Porting digital music on to mobile phones represents a massive opportunity for Microsoft. While Apple has sold about 10m iPods worldwide to date, a quarter of the world’s population own mobile phones, which Microsoft software can turn into digital music players.”

Gates has timed the launch to coincide with his arch-rival Apple founder and chief executive Steve Jobs’ long-awaited unveiling of an iTunes phone, expected this week. Jobs is expected to launch the Motorola iTunes phone, which incorporates the technology of the world’s most successful digital music player, the iPod, into a mobile, at Apple’s annual product show in San Francisco. According to industry sources, the phone will run on the Cingular mobile network in the US and on O2’s UK mobile network.

According to Roger Entner, a US analyst working for telecoms research company Ovum: “Despite their secretive approach to product strategy, it is known that Apple, Motorola and Cingular are planning to announce the new iTunes phone at Macworld in San Francisco this week.”

Despite Apple’s refusal to comment on the existence of an iTunes phone, Motorola has won US FCC approval for the device, the E970. The phone is designed to function in all big markets and will work across any of the world’s main cellular bandwidths.

Microsoft plans to topple Apple’s iTunes from its position as the world’s best-selling digital music service and make Windows Media Audio the industry standard. The Microsoft-powered phone will do everything that an iPod can but will be incompatible with Apple’s products.

In Silicon Valley, the fight between Gates and Jobs for digital music dominance is seen at the latest battle in a war that has been raging between the two businessmen for 25 years.

But while Gates and Jobs go toe-to-toe next week, UK entrepreneur Richard Branson, head of Virgin Group, is in the wings. Virgin plans to release music phones, but only when it is certain Gates and Jobs have ironed out the bugs. Sources within the company say there will not be a sufficient range of reliable handsets until the middle of 2006. Last week Virgin unveiled its own internet music service, Virgin Digital.

Be interesting to see what comes off this, the competition, pricing, etc etc.

Source: thebusinessonline.com

[Guest Jon_]

So if MS partnered with orange to make a music mobile, why is the orange player defult player instead of windows media player, would have expected MS to want media player to be defult media player...

either way why o why do they invest so much in the phone, then supply it with a rubbish set of earphones?

[Guest hecatae]

Motorola E970 :o

Motorola E790, or the to be released E1. I prefer the i398 myself

[Guest Disco Stu]

either way why o why do they invest so much in the phone, then supply it with a rubbish set of earphones?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Not to mention a rubbish couple of media players :evil:

[Guest pd.ryder]

It's about time Apple jumped on this band wagon and finally developed an iTunes application for the Smartphone. After all, they build iTunes for MS PC platforms, why not a mobile version that would be recognised by iTunes itself and sync like an iPod?

[Guest peekie]

in holland we dont have the orange player only the wmp10 , maybe if microsoft are backing the C550 then it might have a chance of an update to wm5 stranger things have happened :o

[Guest NX5]

I hope this means they have sorted out the WMP10 sync issues on the C550, otherwise this is a complete waste of time!

[Guest drblow]

Strange story indeed! Especially considering that so far it seems that a bug in WMP10 is preventing c550 users syncing with the PC & storage card.

I wonder if anyone at MS is even aware of these bugs? It would appear that it's Orange who would recieve the reports from users of the problems, I doubt very much whether they have the wit to actually tell MS about it, or do anything to fix it.

Maybe we should post on the microsoft forums that if they really want to rival Ipod's etc, they should at least think about supplying a player that works, has ff & rew functions, allows playlists etc etc etc. :twisted:

[Guest steve_smith]

It's about time Apple jumped on this band wagon and finally developed an iTunes application for the Smartphone. After all, they build iTunes for MS PC platforms, why not a mobile version that would be recognised by iTunes itself and sync like an iPod?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Apparently there is an iPod phone coming out... See this article from register.com. Apple developing iTunes for the MS Smartphone platform would seem unlikely :(

Personally, I find iTunes an incredibly slow irritating piece of rubbish (for Windows at least, I heard the Mac version is OK). But I guess some people like it :o

Steve.

[Guest dearsina]

Not to mention faster transfer speeds and maybe a memory card that can be taken out without shutting down the phone?

HALLO BILL, ARE YOU LISTENING?

The whole reason the iPod was successful wasn't that it was a novel idea, nor that it was the first in its category, Creative had been making harddisk mp3 players for years before the iPod came out, but the key to its success was that it was simple to use (to a point that an advanced user might find annoying even), and it worked. Two things MS still struggles with.

Pisses me off when they try to take on a product like the iPod with something as crap-tacular as a C550.

/loves the C550, doesn't even own an ipod but apprecaites that the two are very different and good at different things

[Guest pd.ryder]

Simple - and but

With all the publicised problems WMP10 is having with this phone (and, yes, MS do know about it) it wouldn't take too much for Apple to build a killer app like a cut-down version of iTunes that WILL actually sync (!) and wipe the floor with MS all over again.

I'm not suggesting Apple try to turn the Smartphone into an iPod. Their iPod-phone-thing is limited to 100 tracks initially and looks a bit kak anyway. I'd just like a user-friendly app to play my mp3's which will sync with my library on command. (Oh, and playlists on-the-fly, too) (Oh, and it's a free download)

Not much to ask, is it? :o