On iTunes and Operators

Published by Rudy De Waele April 28th, 2005 in 3G, Analysis, Mobile Music, Operators

One more time an excellent view from Russell Buckley on the “Apple, iTunes, iPhone and Motorola” discussions all over blogland since last summer.

“This means that the operators again get nothing - no data revenues and no content revenues either. And since the US carriers are planning to sell direct-to-phone music for $3 a track (in comparison to 99c from iTunes), I don’t expect their launches will be a great success either. Why do they think they can sell at this kind of price?

Anyway, the result of this strategy to strangle the iPhone is that there are now at least two ways for users to get music on their phone - illicit P2P and legal iTunes.”

In Spain you can download a 15 seconds Moby mp3 song for 3 Euro through operators download, while I can get the original on iTunes for 0,99 Euro (or 0,09 Eurocents more then a mono ringtone!) and beam that completely legally to my phone. Have a look on the profits Telefónica Móviles reported last year.

Keep things closed and locked doesn’t help anyone (unless a few)… How long can this greedy game keep going?

social bookmarks: