Motorola Plans Music Service For India
That Motorola (NYSE: MOT) is focusing on music to sell its handsets in India is pretty obvious from it’s promotional campaigns with Bollywood superstar Abhishek Bachchan. ChicagoBusiness reports that the company is ready to launch MotoMusic, its music service, in India. MotoMusic has been operational in China for three years now, content is offered in partnership with Chinese telcos. However, while China has two telcos, Motorola will have to deal with 12 telcos in India…and perhaps many more in the near future as the government intends to give more licenses.
I don’t think an online portal for music would really work in India, because of lack of adequate payment mechanisms, low broadband penetration (just 2.5 million connections) and rampant piracy. Also bear in mind that although mobile music sales are expected to surpass physical format sales this year, mobile music includes Caller Ring Back Tones (CRBT (NYSE: BT)s) which are operator dependent and have a recurring monthly cost, of which full track downloads are believed to be much smaller.
I smell iMoto !!
I think Motorola should launch this service to promote mp3 cellphones. Indian companies need licensed online music sites devoid of popups.
this will be a DRM Protected music . I think these tracks will play exclusively on mobile devices. potability across PC .Mp3 Player will be an prob . Do you think Indian Customer would be comfortable paying for mobile only tracks ? we are in habit of buy once and play anywhere thing . are we ready for it ??
what do you say ?
The success of ringtones, wallpapers etc demonstrate that easy and convenient way to download thousands of favorite music albums on cellphones will sell like hotcakes. The payment mechanism is not an issue with cell phone users as it comes in the bill. A lot of mobile phone bills get reimbursed as well :-) (kidding). They should provide interface on cellphones as well to search for favorite albums and dld it for like 10 or 15 or 20 Rs.
I wonder if motorola is thinking on these lines, if not, then someone else should. May be myself !!!!