Posted by Jonny on November 17th, 2008 under Apple, News, Opinion
Nokia’s ‘Comes With Music’ may already have generated its first fan-site, but questions remain on the future for mobile music services - surely the usability factor doesn’t yet match desktop alternatives, such as iTunes?
Apple does offer the iTunes Store for WiFi, and has before been rumoured to hold plans for its very own mobile music service, though this may prove less successful if aimed at iPhone users alone. As an incremental addition, iTunes for WiFi offers something like a mobile experience.
That no one beyond Nokia appears yet to be aiming to offer a full package (hot potato) mobile music service, incumbents must surely be mulling the latest figures to come out of Japan.
Music Ally will this month pitch two world class speakers against each other in a unique mock-trial on the promise of the mobile music industry.
Titled “Mobile Music in the Dock” the event promises to put the claims made by the mobile industry about mobile music on trial. Speakers will be Mobile Entertainment Forum chairman Ralph Simon and Sibelius Software’s Jeremy Silver acting as defence and prosecution respectively.
Posted by Jonny on November 9th, 2008 under Apple, News, Opinion
Major labels are happy now to sell DRM-free music through retailers such as Amazon and 7Digital, but Apple remains locked out, with three of the four majors denying it permission to sell tracks DRM-free through its iTunes Plus service - even though it’s the largest US music retailer. But this may soon change.
9to5Mac claims Sony Music will make moves to license its tracks for sale through iTunes Plus in the coming “weeks or months”, with some speculating a potential announcement at Macworld San Francisco.
Posted by Jonny on November 7th, 2008 under Apple, News
The price of Blu-ray players and discs seems set to fall this season, as those involved seek to take the format into the mass market - meanwhile that market’s changing, with consumers flocking to sign-up to location-based social networking services for their mobile phones, a pair of ABI Research reports claim.
“Blu-ray vendors and dealers are starting to realize that for Blu-ray to become the next DVD, they need to lower player prices in order to generate interest and build volumes,” said ABI Research principal analyst Steve Wilson.
Posted by Jonny on November 5th, 2008 under Apple, News
We looked at the growing importance of video games in terms of dollars earlier on today. Now a clutch of reports underline Apple’s growing impact on that sector as the company surfs the digital tidal wave.
With sales of the device already creating a global audience in excess of 10 million users developers have a viable potential audience to which to sell their advanced mobile gaming experiences.
“Apple has become our biggest customer. We also believe we are the biggest or second biggest publisher on the iPhone in terms of revenues generated,” Gameloft CFO Alexandre de Rochefort said.
Posted by Jonny on October 10th, 2008 under Apple, News
The BBC has announced that content downloaded to Windows Media PCs using its iPlayer service can now be side-loaded to a growing family of compatible devices - and stormed at Apple’s reluctance to share its DRM as reason for the lack of feature parity for Mac and iPhone users.
The news means video can be played on any mobile device that supports Windows Media digital rights management. The BBC has assembled a list of compatible devices.
To use the feature users simply select a new ‘for media players’ option when downloading content using the iPlayer service, it can then be pulled across to the device. The BBC will in future iPlayer content available for the Nokia N96. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Jonny on October 8th, 2008 under Apple, News
EMI plans to enter the increasingly crowded online music and video sales market with its own download service, to be made available through its existing portal, EMI.com.
The company already has some experience in this - it has been offering its Share service to music journalists for some while in order to securely distribute pre-release music to them for review.
There’s a strong likelihood the site will offer music streaming, as it is being described as a “learning lab” for people to discover new music. The company is increasingly forging its own digital destiny in online music - it’s no suprise last year’s biggest digital story comes from former EMI act, Radiohead, for example.
Some may recall news earlier this week that Nokia plans to implement wider Mac support in 2009, now some early screen shots of what the mobile phone giant plans for the Apple Inc. computer platform have emerged - proving Nokia’s claim to be more than hype.![[Post to Twitter]](http://distorted-loop.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/tweet-this-small.png)
Tweet This
