09.03.05
Grand Unification Rumor Theory
Okay, I can’t resist, I have to make some predictions about what Apple is announcing next Wednesday. Plus I have all sorts of cockamamy theories that wrap everything up in a neat little package.
I don’t think just the “iTunes phone” is enough for them to justify the hype they gave it in the press invitations. I mean, “1000 songs in your pocket changed everything. Here we go again,” is pretty fucking ballsy there’s gotta be something to back it up, and a new device ain’t it.
The thing I find interesting is that all the outlets are talking about the “iTunes Phone”, not the “iPod Phone.” I think this is a subtle hint (and viral marketing at work) that it’s not about device convergence. It’s about putting the iTunes store client on a handheld device. We already know people are willing to pay crazy amounts of money for parts of a song a.k.a. ringtones. I’m betting the theory goes, those same people will pay quite a bit more than $0.99 for the whole song delivered to their phone. Rumor is that’s a dollar more. Plus, no credit card, it just gets billed direct to your phone.
Some of the technical aspects are what got me really thinking. Right now it’s the iTunes client that wraps the AAC file in the DRM. That’s not going to happen on a handset, the hardware just isn’t there. I expect Apple will end up using standard DRM ala OMA. They probably won’t advertise it, but they’ll have to do it. Bonus for them is they get lots of devices, the drawback is that anyone will be able to sell to those devices.
Since I’m assuming they’re using a standard DRM, they can sell any content type they want. I don’t expect they’ll sell ringtones, or graphics. So why not sell videos to the phone? So there’s your video iPod rumors nicely packaged into the announcement. I couldn’t find detailed specs, but apparently the Motorola e790 that it’s based on can play video.
Now for the really crazy bit. I’ve seen bandied about the 25 song limit for this phone. I don’t think that’s such a huge deal, because I’m guessing they will let you re-download songs. Assume you have 50 songs you’ve bought from the iTMS and they let you pick which 25 you want on the phone, but you get on the bus and decide you want to listen to a different song in your library. You drop one, and the phone re-downloads it from Apple.
I have three reasons for that crackpot thought:
First the carriers would salivate at the revenue boost from the GPRS charges for downloading 4 meg files, much less that same file five times. They would love this model.
Second, if I buy a song from the iTMS on my phone, how does it get back to my computer’s iTunes library? Unless they’ve implemented some sort of hokey reverse sync, it’s stuck on my phone. A much better user experience is for me to go home and start up iTunes and do “Advanced->Check for Purchased Music…” We already know it’s the client that enforces the “one download rule” of iTunes, so that’s really trivial to implement, they just don’t do anything different on the server-side.
Third, there’s gotta be a reason, other than convenience to charge a dollar more than when I’m at my computer. No way someone is gonna pay a buck more just to get a song before they get home. Unless I can’t put stuff I buy at the iTMS on my computer on my phone, and that would be simply retarded. Granted, I don’t think anyone would pay a buck fifty for a part of a song, so what do I know? I do think someone would pay an extra buck to have it on-demand on their phone.
I’ll be the smugest bastard in North Carolina on Wednesday afternoon if any of this comes true. 