Sanyo, Others Plan to Expand Mobile Music Delivery Overseas
--From AOL.-- Cooters
Tokyo, Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Sanyo Electric Co., which leads a consortium supporting the world's first service for mobile phone users to download and listen to compact disc-quality music, said the group plans to expand the service overseas after starting in Japan at the end of this month.
As the ``Music on Your Mobile'' system, developed by Sanyo, Hitachi Ltd. and Fujitsu Ltd., uses personal handyphone system, a mobile alternative to cellular phones, ``we plan to offer the service abroad because Japan isn't the only country where PHS is used,'' said Sanyo official Toshiaki Hioki, who heads the consortium, in an interview. He declined to provide details, which could be announced by the end of this year.
The consortium comprised 33 companies, including Kyocera Corp. and the Japanese unit of Qualcomm Inc., as of Nov. 13. The group is looking to expand the membership and make their music delivery system a global standard. Besides Japan, PHS is used in most countries in Asia and Latin America as well as Australia, South Africa and Turkey.
PHS subscribers in Japan alone are projected by the industry to grow by 200,000 every year from the year ended last March to 6.1 million in the next year from April 2001. Sanyo is the top handset supplier to DDI Pocket Inc., which accounts for almost 60 percent of Japan's total PHS subscribers.
DDI Pocket
DDI Pocket will offer Music on Your Mobile service. Besides music, the content will include English language lessons and Japanese comic stories. Sanyo is the sole handset supplier for the service now, though other makers may follow suit.
Sanyo, which supplies two-fifths of the world's mobile phone batteries, began overseas sales of PHS this fiscal year in China, Thailand and Taiwan. It plans PHS sales of 12.5 billion yen ($113 million) globally this year, or 7.4 percent of revenue from its telephone business.
Music on Your Mobile allows users to copy downloaded content among themselves on a memory card developed by Hitachi and Infineon Technologies AG, Germany's biggest chipmaker.
Because any music file recorded on a memory card in a PHS handset is encoded, users wishing to listen to the content need to pay for decoding. The payment is split between copyright holders, content providers, telecommunications carriers and others involved in offering the service.
To make the world's first such service recognized and profitable, the number of subscribers needs to reach at least 300,000, Hioki said. ``Our system can't remain as an infrastructure unless our service becomes profitable.''
Sanyo shares slipped 5 yen, or 0.6 percent, to 867.
Nov/23/2000 19:33 ET |
