Motorola to intro iTunes phone in August?
By Peter Rojas 
posted July 11th 2005 8:25AM
posted July 11th 2005 8:25AM
The iTunes phone has been a no-show so many times this year that we hate to get anyone's hopes up yet again, but the Sunday Telegraph reports that Motorola is going to introduce their first iTunes-compatible cellphone at the V Festival in the UK, which kicks off on August 20th. We wouldn't be at all surprised to see the V Festival come and go without an announcement, but if you're looking for a reason to believe, you should note that the concert is sponsored by Virgin Mobile, the one UK carrier (besides, maybe, Orange) that would probably be most receptive to carrying an iTunes phone.
Excited... Let's hope they release the Itunes phone for all carriers not specific ones.. Does anyone know the specifications of the phone and approx. how many songs it can hold?
I wonder if Motorola is going to make an Itunes phone caompatible with Nextel?
Furthermore, I can't help wondering when Nextel is going to release a bluetooth enabled flip phone.
Nextel will eventually release a bluetooth phone, the downside is that it will probably cost 500 bucks. Nextel prices are WACK.
Doesn't Virgin have their own download service? If this is the case, wouldn't that reduce their enthusiasm for an iTunes phone?
Apple's iTunes phone does not need to have a wireless carrier's approval for it to work as long as it is a GSM phone (the ones with SIM cards).
All Apple has to do is to sell UNLOCKED versions of the iTunes phone (just as third parties do on eBay). This allows the phone to work with ANY carrier that uses GMS (essentially all of them!).
Then all the user has to do is place the SIM card of their existing phone into the iTunes phone. Then viola! It works! An unlocked phone is one which is not given a password which forces it to work only with a single wireless carrier.
Note that I am assuming that the user wants to download their music on iTunes then upload it into the iTunes phone via bluetooth or USB, rather than wanting to download music via wireless service. Of course if the iTunes phone has Java, conceivably, you can download a Java cell version of iTunes into the phone and download music from Apple itself via wireless.
Note that the most important thing is the users can use the iTunes phone irrespective of the wireless carrier's consent or not - so long as it is a GSM phone.