Motorola to build Microsoft music phones

By Steve Malone

Posted on 14 Feb 2006 at 10:57

The US mobile phone manufacturer Motorola has signed a deal with Microsoft to incorporate the software giant's technologies in a new range of mobile phones.

Motorola already has a series of phones that include the ability to download music from Apple's rival iTunes including the ROKR and the SLVR L7. However, the company has since admitted the iTunes-flavoured phones have not exactly been flying off the shelves.

Undaunted, Motorola is trying again. The new handsets will incorporate Windows Media Digital Rights Management (DRM), Windows Media Audio (WMA), the enhanced Windows Media Audio Professional (WMA Pro) codec and Media Transfer Protocol (MTP). The phones will be able to connect to Windows PCs via a USB 2.0 connection. The use of MTP will allow Windows Media Player to automatically recognise the Motorola handsets.

In addition to these announcements, Microsoft and Motorola say they plan to introduce a new line of phones that will allow people to search and download music wirelessly via a 3G network. Microsoft is promising that the use of the WMA Pro codec will provide high quality music delivered smoothly via 3G.

Motorola is saying that the first Microsoft phone should appear in the second half of this year while the handsets able to download music over the air will arrive in 2007.