ROKR Marriage Rocky

The RED HERRING reports that the Motorola, Cingular and Apple relationship is going through some rocky times following recent statements by executives, such as Moto CEO Ed Zander's infamous comments, "Screw the Nano. What the hell does the Nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs?" To compound problems, the Rokr is getting a lukewarm response from consumers and Cingular is planning its own music downloading service.

David Card at JupiterResearch said, "The ROKR is not a great product. It’s a big clunky phone. We think there are going to be a lot of phones sold that play MP3s, but there is not going to be a lot of downloading over the air in the U.S. Most of the wireless carriers are obsessing with the over-the-air delivery. They should focus more on docking rather than downloading on the cell network."

Card added, "In this country the carriers have the upper hand, not the handset manufacturers, because our phones are heavily subsidized. In five years we believe there will be more music phones than MP3 players."