ROKR's price cut to $149.99, Apple sabotaging the market?

Josh: Funny you ask, as I stated in the article I got it from MacSlash

Hmmm...I wonder where TUAW got the idea of Apple sabotaging from. http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/09/1552220&tid=181

Well, My Wife loves her ROKR phone. I bought if from Optus here in Australia.. when I was transfering from another network (Vodaphone) to Optus... she got the new phone and popped her networks sim card in no problems. I kept my old phone. It means I now get to use our ipod more often as she just uses her phone. Anyway the phone works well, syncs with our itunes libary no probs and she say's it's best mobile phone she ever had.

Best Buy has the Rokr for 129.99 exclusivly.

Agreed on it not being Apple's fault. Apple did not prevent AAC+Fairplay content from being used as ringtones; that was Cingular. Apple did not tell Motorola to put iTunes compatibility into the (f)ugliest phone in their arsenal either; that was 100% Motorola. Give me the ability to use my iTunes Store purchased songs (or MP3s) as ringtones, give my iTunes synching (and iCal), and get the phone into the hands of T-Mobile and I will purchase it, whether its in the RAZR or PEBL form factors.

Music playing phones are big here, too. And they've been around for years. Apple is just a bit late in the game, as usual. I was disappointed with the release of the ROKR for a variety of reasons, chief among them was the inability to purchase from iTunes over the phone. I suspect that's another reason for the poor sales - it's just another phone that plays music. Not terribly exciting or innovative. I've been sync'ing purchased music to my Audiovox SMT5600 Smartphone for almost a year on my Windows box. And with SD storage, I'm not limited to 100 songs. If Apple ever comes to market with a similar device (phone, music player, semi-PDA), they'd clean house and score even more cross-over revenue.

They may be fun but they are stupid. This phone took too long to make it to market and it was outdated when it shipped. The carriers have required crazy restrictions on it just to get it to market and you think Apple is holding it back? Apple is probably making $10/phone in licensing costs and has no support costs associated with it. Compare that to the profit they make on a shuffle (about $20-$30) and you can see why Apple has every reason to want this to work. Remember besides the free money in licensing fees they also tie people to the iTMS (which they are making a small profit on) and iTunes which also helps push adoption of QuickTime. Apple wants these phones to work but Apple/Steve has big press events for it's products (not to pre-anounce someone else's). I'd bet that Steve will happily show off the new Razr once it is shipping at an appropriate event but I see no reason to hold some Apple style media event for a Motorola product. Handset players will be a big piece of the market and trust me, Apple wants it's piece of that pie.

But conspiracy theories are more fun :-)

Part of the phone's failure has to do with its exclusive tie-in with Cingular. Cingular is just 28% of the market in the U.S. (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NZB/is_8_7/ai_n15630384) I think that should be considered before a wacky conspiracy plot... I am not changing my carrier to Cingular just for such a phone, but I'd sure consider it if my carrier had it. I'd at least go to the store to see it. But as it is, I haven't. I like the fact I could be listening to music as loud as I want without missing a call.

So is it "sneaky" that Cingular won't let you use songs as ringtones? Is it "sneaky" that MOTOROLA decided to produce this POS before an iTunes RAZR? For crying out loud, did Apple design this thing or did Motorola? The only thing you can fault Apple with is the 100 song limit, period (which I agree was a very stupid move). Of course, even reaching that amount over a USB 1.1 interface is going to take some patience.