Mobile entertainment experience gets slammed by Time Warner CEO
If you've tried the native Verizon VCAST and Sprint Music Store features lately, did you come away feeling unimpressed and possibly frustrated? It's been mused that the reason mobile handset-based music services have not reached critical mass with consumers was because the limitations and difficulties with usage. This is true, and nowhere has a system like an iPod clickwheel been installed -- along with music selection software -- on any mobile that gets close to the reality distortion field the iPod ecosystem creates. So, it is no wonder that Time Warner's CEO is kinda bashing the existing and overall mobile music experience for consumers at 3GSM this week. Said Ed Bronfman Jr., who said mobile music purchasing is expensive, complicated and slow, added that "We need to make it easy, affordable and quick to get music on mobile phones -- until we achieve this goal, we will be leaving billions of dollars on the table."
Filed under: Multimedia, Misc
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tim @ Feb 15th 2007 11:13AM
It's so true. I sold my iPod and Blackberry and bought a Cingular 8525 and a 2GB microSD card. I really wanted convergence into a single, ultimate device. In theory, it didn't matter to me to manually swap out music folders on the SD card, and I bought Coreplayer for a decent music playing interface. After a couple weeks, I miss the iPod. I miss the Blackberry too, as Blackberry Connect does not work as well as a Blackberry handset. So it's going back, and I'm getting the new Blackberry 8800 next week. Followed shortly by a new 5.5G iPod.
Convergence is a nice concept, but ease of use and simplicity is what really matters in the end to people. I'm curious to see how the iPhone does in terms of battery life. People listen to music for hours, and if all that functionality risks killing the small battery in the thing for phone calls before the end of the day, it's going to be rejected soon after the coolness wears off.
k @ Feb 15th 2007 6:27PM
To clarify - Edgar Bronfman Jr. is not Time Warner CEO. He is CEO of Warner Music Group which is a completely separate company.
Jenna Breen @ Mar 9th 2007 12:37AM
you do know that you can use normal mp3's with your sprint phone right? with verizon you can't but you can with sprint. i have 4, 1gb memory cards full of music and videos. sprint doesn't force you to buy music!
elgee02 @ Mar 9th 2007 1:51AM
Wrong Jenna... you sure as hell can use normal mp3's with Verizon Wireless phones.