Motorola and iRadio

To justify my claims and prove that I HAVE been reading all I say I have, heres a post on iRadio...

Well well, what a surprise. iRadio is supposed to let customers download songs from their computers to their mobile phones and play the songs using their car radios. Supposedly, we'll be able to get 10 hours of music that way. Brilliant. Or is it? Kind of reminds me of an article I read earlier about how profits move upstream as products get commoditized.

But I digress. More about the iRadio first. Instinct tells me that the telcos probably aren't going to be too happy with the new Motorola phones. On one hand, they're trying to push 3G. However, in transferring music from their computer, users get to bypass telcos completely. Which probably isn't too healthy for the telephone company's profits.

Oh well, back to the main thing... so Motorola has identified a potential market in that almost everyone has a phone. Who DOSEN'T know that? The thing is, whether they consciously realise it or not, they have also considered the fact that almost everyone in their target market with a phone also has a computer and the clincher would probably be unlimited internet access.

If you give consumers the choice of channels to receive their media from, would they choose the free one or the one they have to pay for? Of course, in this case the one consumers have to pay for grants convenience in the fact that they can choose their songs while on the move. Why specifically for cars in this case then? Well... last time I checked you weren't supposed to use your mobile phone while driving. Imagine the following scenario where a TP (Traffic Police, not Toilet Paper) pulls you over:

TP: "Why were you SMS-ing while driving?"

You: "But I wasn't! I was downloading music to my mobile phone!"

TP: "Oh that makes it alright then, go along now..."

As if that's ever going to happen in real life. But the thing is, if you can store 10 hours of music, barring battery life considerations I'd trade in my mobile phone and mp3 player for a new motorola phone even though I rarely get to drive (Dad if you're reading this I'm not complaining.)

Also, while mobility is great, do we really WANT to choose songs on the move? perhaps a songlist compiled beforehand and streamed directly to our 3G handsets would be more appropriate. Why not an uncontrolled playlist of random songs according to your liking? Oh wait, they already have that. Its called Radio.