Posted on 03/18/2005 11:02:13 PM PST by Swordmaker
MARCH 16, 2005 (REUTERS) - Motorola Inc. didn't show upcoming phones designed to work with Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes digital music service at a recent tech show because of the pair's differing approach to launching new products, executives from Motorola said yesterday.
Motorola, the world's No. 2 mobile phone maker, also revealed plans for delivering phones to Sprint, and its hopes for selling its popular RAZR phone to more U.S. companies.
In response to a question about why Motorola didn't show its upcoming iTunes phone at the CeBIT technology fair in Germany, Motorola said it tends to display its products before they go on the market -- while Apple CEO Steve Jobs does not.
"The first thing you're seeing here is a merger of two different industries with different ideas of launching products," Ron Garriques, president of Motorola's mobile phone division told analysts and reporters at a news conference at the CTIA U.S. wireless show in New Orleans. "Steve's perspective is that you launch a product on Sunday and sell it on Monday." he added.
Garriques said Motorola is on schedule to deliver two phones that can play music downloaded from the iTunes service this year, with one coming on the market in the first half of the year and another in the second half.
He also downplayed a question about whether Motorola didn't unveil the phones at CeBIT because of a disagreement with mobile phone carriers. "I've got lots of carriers fighting to be the first one we go with," Garriques said in an interview.
Many analysts believe that phones that can play and store music will be hugely popular among consumers because of the popularity of Apple's stand-alone iPod music player. But others say such phones will be less popular with carriers because they believe consumers will likely download music to their phones via their computer rather than pay more to operators by downloading directly over a wireless connection.
Garriques wouldn't give any details about the long-awaited iTunes phones, but he laid out some of Motorola's U.S. plans.
Motorola hopes to deliver three phones to Sprint in the fourth quarter for the No. 3 U.S. operator to begin testing for use on its network. Garriques said two of the phones would be "more traditional," but he didn't give details.
Motorola has been trying for a long time to build up a relationship with Sprint, which has tended to favor other mobile phone makers. Motorola, the main technology supplier to Nextel Communications Inc. has high hopes its relationship will improve after Sprint buys Nextel later this year.
Garriques said he also hopes in the fourth quarter this year to deliver a version of Motorola's flagship RAZR phone to U.S. operators running CDMA networks. Motorola hasn't included this phone model in its financial guidance for 2005 as delivery could slip into the first quarter of 2006, he said.
Garriques told analysts on the fringes of the conference that sales of CDMA versions of the RAZR phone would bring lower profit margins than GSM sales because it costs $25 more to build CDMA phones than to build GSM phones.
CDMA customers will want to pay the same price as GSM customers, Garriques said. Cingular Wireless, which uses GSM technology in its network is currently the only U.S. operator selling the RAZR.
Garriques also said Motorola expects to have about four to six phones models on the market this year that work on both cellular networks and Wi-Fi, a short-range network technology.
No iTunes cell phone yet PING!
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