Sites like Engadget have been talking about Microsoft’s (AAPL) cell phone version of the Zune multimedia players for several days. Apple (AAPL) will not launch the iPhone until June, so it may not have the kind of head start on major competition that it did with the iPod.
And, competitors keep coming out of the walls. Ominiphone, a British mobile music company, has launched a service that will allow music downloads to cell phones in Europe and Asia. The company has signed deals with 23 mobile phone companies with customer bases of 690 million users in 40 countries. Since the iPhone will only be offered through Cingular for the time being, there is little reason for other carriers to support iTunes for the mobile market.
According to the Associated Press, the new service has some important advantages over the Apple product: "Unlike the iPhone, Lewis said the service downloads music over the air across a data network, meaning users can have instant access to new music despite their location "
If Apple is counting on the iPhone to get its stock back up to multi-year highs, it may have a very long wait.
Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.
Top Gaining Stocks
Top Losing Stocks