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Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Sinead Carew
LAS VEGAS: Motorola Inc., the world's No. 2 handset maker, unveiled plans on Monday to improve media services on its cellphones via agreements with Microsoft Corp and Yahoo Inc and said it is developing set top boxes that can send home television to phones.
The company, which has been boosted in the last two years by the popularity of its flagship Razr phone design, is hoping to focus this year on offering easier-to-use media services on cellphones, Chief Executive Ed Zander said.
"I think last year was cool devices. This year it's cool experiences," Zander said in an interview late on Monday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
"Making all that technology come out of the box is what we need to do," he said, suggesting that the wireless industry should make multimedia services such as picture swapping and Web surfing much easier for consumers to use.
In his keynote speech earlier in the day Zander had unveiled plans to put Microsoft's Windows Media digital rights management (DRM) in a music playing phone model in the first half of this year, with other models to follow.
The idea is to give consumers the choice to wirelessly download music to cellphones from several digital music stores, such as Napster Inc and RealNetworks Inc's Rhapsody, which use Microsoft's copy protection system.
Motorola also showcased Yahoo Go, a new mobile Web browsing service from Yahoo that it would put in cellphones next year to make it easier to surf the Web on handsets.
It also showed a prototype of a set top box that, like privately held Sling Media's Slingbox, would stream cable TV to phones or laptops so consumers could see the same TV programs they watch in the living room when they are travelling.
Dan Maloney, Head of Motorola's connected home division said the product should be ready for customer trials in 2007 but he noted wireless and cable service providers would need to work out agreements with programming companies to make it work.
"There are a lot of open issues about moving valued content out of the home," Maloney said in an interview.
(Additional reporting by Lucas Van Grinsven, Reporting by Sinead Carew; editing by Sue Thomas, Reuters Messaging)
Source: Reuters
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