Motorola has announced that it will be completing its previously announced acquisition of Soundbuzz, the Singapore-based provider of digital music downloads. In fact, Soundbuzz is the leading provider for the entire Asian continent.
The companies did not disclose any of the financial terms of the deal but did say it had been in the works for a few months.
“Clearly, this marks a major milestone, as it positions Soundbuzz and Motorola to better participate in the ongoing growth in Asia’s booming mobile music download market,” Soundbuzz CEO Sudhanshu Sarronwala said.
The company’s MotoMusic platform will now have 750,000 songs available for download in India, Southeast Asia, and Greater China.
Result for: mobile music
The large European mobile phone carrier O2 has announced a partnership with Napster to “offer the UK’s largest full Track mobile music download
service.”
There is however, one hitch. Your handset must have “O2 Active” to access
the Napster Mobile service, and so far it seems only 30 different handsets can
do so. For those who can however, the service will give users access to over
five million tracks and offer “dual delivery of tracks to both
the customer’s mobile phone and PC via email.”
The new partnership will provide individual tracks for 99p or 5 for £4 for a
promotional Period but there was no word on pricing after that period.
Result for: mobile music
According to a study by MultiMedia Intelligence, 50 percent of all phones shipped worldwide will be music-capable by 2011. The report also estimates that the Cell phone market itself will remain flat in terms of growth with about 950 million phones being sold in 2011, same like estimates for 2008.
The mobile music business was $6 billion USD for 2008 and MMI chief researcher Frank Dickson says that music is one of the key drivers “behind future success for cellular carriers.”
The study comes at a point when carrier independent music stores are becoming more and more commonplace. Apple offers its iTunes store through the iPhone’s wireless and Nokia is introducing its Nokia Music Store worldwide.
