Think Apple’s iPod is the height of trendy? Guess again. Japan does it wirelessly. U.S. cellular carriers, no doubt, will follow. Consider this item from M-Internet360:
Chaku-Uta-Full song download service has been growing at a rapid pace in Japan. Cellular providers KDDI and Okinawa Cellular Telephone reached 1M downloads in EZ Chaku-uta, and achieved it in just 48 days. At the moment only KDDI is offering this service in Japan.
But here is an interesting comparison of the Chaku-uta versus Apple-iTunes music download services:
As phones become sophisticated in the future, the competition of iPods will not only come from exisiting mp3 players in the market like Creative Zen, but also from cell phone manufacturers.
“Chaku uta” are wireless music downloads running 20-30 seconds, used for ringtones. “Chaku-Uta-Full” are full songs downloaded to mobile phones via KDDI/AU s, EV-DO cellular network.
Which is not to say that iTunes is doing badly. Apple says that its iTunes online music store is now downloading songs at the rate of over a million a day.
The latest figures from Apple indicate iTunes has sold 250 million downloads since its US launch in April 2003 and subsequent launches in 14 other countries.
