Is 100 iTunes Songs on a ROKR Enough?

September 14, 2005 By Digital Trends Staff

Research from firm The Diffusion Group suggests the limit set by Apple and Motorola on the new iTunes phone may not be enough music for early adopters.

The new iTunes ROKR phone from Motorola has drawn a lot of attention to itself since Apple’s release of it last week. With a limit of 100 songs which can be stored on the ROKR at any one time however, will people really flock to it the way it is hoped? New research from The Diffusion Group suggests this storage limit may not be enough to satisfy early adopters.

Early adopters of hybrid cell phone/music players, suggests TDG, would prefer devices which can store approximately 250 songs on average. This number is even higher amongst the 15 to 24 age crowd, with 335 songs being the average.

"Mobile phone manufacturers are hoping that the ‘iPod crowd’ will gravitate toward new mobile phones that incorporate support for iTunes-like services," said Michael Greeson, president and principal analyst for The Diffusion Group. "While this segment is definitely interested in these hybrid phones, they bring with them very high expectations. For example, consumers between the ages of 15 and 24 (the prime target for music phones) will expect the device on average to hold at least 335 songs – more than three times the storage capacity of Motorola’s ROKR phone."

Showing 4 comments

RAZR at 9:22pm 4th October 2005 There is a media slot on the ROKR E1 phone, but the built-in itunes player is hard wired to only allow a max of 100 songs, no matter how much memory the card has. However, the built in Java based MP3 player doesn't have the 100 song limitation.
Ian Bell and Dan Gaul at 10:23am 16th September 2005 Someone posted over on Rob's talk back: http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback72.html
That this is actually an older Motorola e398 phone and that there might be a media card slot where the battery is. I wonder if that is true?
fungku at 5:31pm 14th September 2005 Agreed. 100 songs means you can't replace it with your flash player.

What I'd like to see is a phone with built in player where I dont need to bring my iPod Mini/nano when I go on a short plane trip (like a 2.5 hour flight). I can just use my phone and not have to lug around another charger/device.
Ian Bell and Dan Gaul at 2:11pm 14th September 2005 I think 100 songs is a waste of a good idea. A lot of higher end phones have a media card slot, so you can add more than 512MB of storage if you want.