Ending months of speculation, Apple Computer on Wednesday rolled out a mobile phone capable of playing music and a tiny new iPod that will replace the popular iPod Mini.
At an invitation-only event in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs rolled out the Rokr (rhymes with "soccer"), a colour-screen mobile phone that can hold music downloaded from iTunes. The product had been expected since July 2004, when Motorola and Apple announced plans to collaborate on a music-capable phone.
"Today the talk ends and the music begins," said Ralph de la Vega, chief operating officer at Cingular, which will be the exclusive carrier of the phone in the US.
A Motorola spokesperson said the Rokr would be launched in Australia on 15 September, but could not confirm any exclusivity deals with carriers or a local price.
The Rokr can hold only 100 songs, even if the consumer inserts a memory card larger than the 512MB card that ships with the phone. The Rokr has a colour display and features built-in stereo speakers, as well as stereo headphones that also serve as a mobile headset with a microphone.
Also on Wednesday, Apple announced a new iPod, the iPod Nano: "1,000 songs in your pocket and impossibly small," Jobs said. It's "thinner than a No. 2 pencil," he added. "The iPod Nano is 80 percent smaller than the original iPod." iPod Nano comes in two models -- the 4GB iPod nano holds about 1,000 songs and the 2GB iPod Nano holds 500 songs. They cost AU$359 and AU$299, respectively, and are available now in Apple's online store.
"iPod Nano is the biggest revolution since the original iPod," Jobs said. "iPod nano is a full-featured iPod in an impossibly small size, and it's going to change the rules for the entire portable music market."
The iPod Nano features the same 30-pin dock connector as the iPod and iPod Mini, allowing it to work with a wide range of accessories, including home stereo speakers and car adapters.
The Rokr could help Apple crack a potentially vast new market -- hundreds of millions of mobile phones are sold each year. In North America, Motorola is the largest handset maker and Cingular is the largest service provider.
iPod sales have propelled Apple into a lead market position, with a 53 percent share of all digital-music players, according to a report released on Tuesday by Solutions Research Group. Sony and RCA tied for a distant second with 9 percent share each.
Despite Apple's steps into the mobile-phone music player space, analysts are mixed on its effect on the iPod generation.
"I see the move as largely defensive," said Roger Kay, president and chief analyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates. "A mobile phone is not the optimal device for listening to music."
Kay noted that Apple should be concerned that other handset makers and network providers might try to bypass the need to work with Apple, given that mobile phones are already exceptionally popular and increasingly capable of playing music.
Gartner analysts estimate 780 million handsets will be sold this year alone with 1 billion mobile phones sold every year by 2009.
Other analysts, such as Tim Deal with Technology Business Research (TBR), say that Apple's move into the mobile phone market is a natural evolution of not only its iPod strategy but its iTunes store, which isn't available in Australia, as well.
"The pervasiveness of mobile phones in the world makes sense that there should be a relationship of these mobile phones and iTunes," Deal said.
Motorola is also banking on more sales of its handsets with Apple as a partner. Gartner ranks Motorola as the No. 2 global seller of mobile phones behind Nokia, which announced its N91 handset in April. Capable of playing music, the N91 has a colour screen, a camera and 4GB of storage that can hold about 1,000 songs. O2's Xphone IIm and Sony's Walkman W800i also are similar to Motorola's Rokr.
Jeremy Roche from CNET.com.au contributed to this report.
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Evan
09/09/2005 07:34 PM
Oh, come on, its a damn Motorola with some Apple software. NOT an apple product. By the looks of it, slightly modified, more boring-looking than the cool E398.
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waa
10/09/2005 03:51 PM
LAME just doesnt quite say it. Meh i wasn't expectin much anyway. Apple dominates the mp3 player market, with little serious competition happenin at the moment why would they make a phone that makes probably their top product obselete?
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Some Dude
11/09/2005 01:36 PM
Heres an even better idea than all this: Get a PSP and the cheapest phone you can find that has bluetooth.
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Stuart
12/09/2005 01:05 PM
Apple have crippled the ROKR. In almost every way it is inferior to the Sony Ericsson W800i, which for a bit of extra cash is a much more useful product.
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genious
02/06/2007 04:53 PM
too expensive
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loz
13/08/2007 05:48 PM
whoever cares?
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bro
14/02/2008 01:25 PM
you obviously care because you are looking at it
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