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A shampoo tycoon is offering cellphone service with built-in music streaming
John Paul DeJoria has a knack for business success in areas as diverse as haircare products and tequila, and he's now ready to dip his toes into yet another industry: cellphone service. The magnate (along with ROK Entertainment's Johnathan Kendrick) is about to launch ROK Mobile, a US wireless carrier with music as its hook. Paying $50 per month will get you both all-unlimited phone service as well as 'free' streaming from a catalog of 20 million songs, saving you a lot of cash if you tend to splurge on music providers like Rdio or Spotify. DeJoria sees this as doing Americans a favor -- he tells Forbes that it could save the country billions by lowering the costs of both cellular access and music in one fell swoop.
ROK's acquisition of Xero officially now a vapor-acquisition
We certainly can't give Xero Mobile credit for launching any actual product -- because they haven't -- but we're all about giving credit where credit is due, and in Xero's case, we've gotta hand it to 'em for continuing the magnificent vaporware parade for as long as they have. It's now been nearly 14 months since the ad revenue-supported MVNO had originally claimed to be targeting a launch, and as far as we can tell, they're still doing something behind the scenes; that "something" may have absolutely nothing to do with actually launching, but hey, announcing partnerships and potential acquisitions must pay the bills, we suppose. Speaking of potential acquisitions, suitor ROK Entertainment has unceremoniously dropped its bid this week without giving any rhyme or reason, leading us to wonder where this leaves Xero's liquidity -- do they have enough money to continue trying to sell themselves, let alone launch an MVNO?
ROK acquires majority share of Rock, The Rock has no comment
In a move that sounds an awful lot more comical than it actually is, ROK Entertainment has acquired a majority shareholding in Rock, the laptop manufacturer. The former stone specializes in providing mobile content / entertainment, and apparently, it's hoping to share "expertise in IPTV, place shifting, mobile internet and mobile entertainment platforms" with the latter. Essentially, ROK sees convergence between laptops and mobile technologies as imminent, and while specifics of the agreement weren't really detailed, we're already getting anxious to start sidetalkin' on our next Rock machine.
Xero Mobile in yet another round of acquisition talks
The fact that former Gizmondo peeps are still associated with the vaporware artists at Xero Mobile would send most would-be investors sprinting in the opposite direction, we'd think, but what do we know? After announcing a series of stock swaps, partnerships with companies we've never heard of (whose execs just happen to be on Xero's management team), and failed buyouts, ROK Entertainment Group -- which offers video downloads to phones, apparently -- has inexplicably announced an interest in acquiring the perpetual hype machine. If we had to guess, we'd figure that there's some sort of shady business deal going on behind the scenes that lets parties involved make yet another obscene profit without actually launching any actual product, but we've gotta ask: just how many times can the same team of scam artists run the same con and continue to pad their wallets without getting busted? All we need to see, Xero, is a functional website where we can sign up for one of your ad revenue-subsidized plans you've been touting for ages, and we'll start to believe. Honest!
