Cingular to launch digital music download service next year

Cingular Wireless is already the dominating player in the mobile service segment in the United States and they now want to play a dominant part in the digital music download service. The market is currently very much controlled by Apple with their iTunes Digital Music Store and Cingular plans to launch their service sometime next year.

They would be launching a “walkie-talkie” style phone, this year, which would be complimented by their music service to be made available next year. It would allow the users to download music on their mobile phones directly from the internet. Users expected this sort of functionality from the Motorola mobile phone with iTunes support, but Apple declined to offer them this flexibility.

However, Cingular warns that the service would be a bit more expensive than what they pay on the iTunes to make up for the extra input cost for the company. They are still working out on the details on how to make it possible for the users to interact with the music store to purchase and download music to their mobiles. Cingular is also involved in the Apple-Motorola deal in selling their ROKR mobile phone in the market.

They have more plans for improving upon their services and launching new products in 2005 and plan to launch some push-to-talk technology based products.