Mobile Phones in Europe Vying for iTunes

At Berlin's IFA electronics show, Germany's T-Mobile and the UK's O2 mobile phone providers both say they want to sell iTunes for their phones, maybe as soon as next week.

At Berlin’s IFA electronics show this week, Germany’s T-Mobile (a branch of the larger Deutsche Telekom) said it planned to begin selling Motorola’s iTunes-capable phone in Germany by the end of 2005. Not to be outdone, British-based mobile phone operator O2 Plc. said it hoped to announce a deal to offer iTunes software to its customers as early as next week.

Apple and Motorola have each scheduled press events for September 7th, at which the companies are expected to announce the immediate availability of iTunes-enabled cell phones from U.S. carrier Cingular Wireless.

Motorola has been looking for partners for its iTunes-enabled phones for some months; the phones are fully compatible with Apple’s iTunes music service and are expected to offer storage sufficient for about eight hours of music.

O2 currently charges its mobile phone customers between £1 and £1.50 for digital music tracks; for its part, T-Mobile already runs its own service, "mobile jukebox," but says it is no longer interested in restricting customers to operator-specific offerings, since customers expect to be able to use their preferred services if they’re accessing the Internet.

Apple operates its iTunes Music Store in 17 European nations including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom; each European iTunes Music Store carries a catalog of more than 1 million tracks from major music companies as well as independent labels.