tech talk

Following the trend of cramming every possible media device into everyone’s cell phone, Motorola, Apple, and Cingular have teamed up to introduce the first cell phone with the ability to play 100 legally purchased iTunes tracks. Named the Rokr and priced at $249 with a 2 year contract agreement, the phone is a failure right out of the gate. Limitations and alienation will only lead to the device being the classic example of a flop.

The idea behind the phone, allowing people to play legally purchased music on their cell phone, thus eliminating the need for more devices, isn’t even a new idea. It’s been done already by a small company named Microsoft. Their Windows Smartphones have a built in version of Windows Media Player already capable of playing tracks purchased from any music store with .wma file offerings. While Microsoft doesn’t have the “cool factor” that Apple currently carries, this is still Apple trying to re-invent the wheel.

Let’s look beyond the fact that it’s not a new concept and really take a look at why the device will fail. Firstly, almost everyone will take notice of the price. Normally, when signing a two year contract with a service provider, you get a discount on the cellular device of your choice. This isn’t the case with the Rokr. You have to sign a two year contract and still pay full price for the phone. Besides the fact that people are less and less satisfied with long term contracts, the price point puts the phone out of reach of the teenage demographic it’s marketed towards. It’s safe to say that not having your key demographic be able to afford the device is a swing and a miss.

Beyond the price, you have the limited functionality of the player itself. The internal memory of the phone is expandable, meaning you can add larger memory cards to the phone to increase it’s storage capacity. This would be nice if it meant you could also store more music on that memory. Unfortunately, the software inside is capped at a 100 song maximum, meaning you can have room for 500 songs, and still only be able to playback 100 of them. In a market where you can get an mp3 player, for the less money, that holds and plays 10 times more tracks, such limited functionality becomes a turn off to the techno geeks who would be willing to pay the extra money for such a device.

While this may not be true for everyone, I also know that, personally, I would never want an all in one device like this. I already have a hard enough time trying to keep my cell phone charged properly as it is. I can’t even begin to imagine how much more quickly playing music on it would drain the battery. In a day and age where we have this uncanny desire to stay connected, can you imagine having your battery die and being stuck with no music or ability to place a phone call? You’d be forced into reality and may even take notice of your surroundings. Nobody wants this.

All in all, this seems like a product Apple will quietly let slip away. Their line of iPods continues to grow with the recent addition of the iPod Nano and the world is already eating it up. Maybe this is a lesson the industry needs to finally learn: No one really wants one device to do everything when it does nothing all that well.