Ericsson and Napster have joined forces to bring a service that will let consumers download music to mobile phones, it has been revealed today. Together, they will license the Napster-branded music service to mobile phone carriers.
Napster and Ericsson said that their business model "accommodates mobile operator participation in all revenue streams."
The new Napster-Ericsson service is scheduled to go live in Europe over the next 12 months and will initially be offered to operators in Europe, Asia, Latin America and North America, the companies said. It will let consumers load music onto their phones via a computer or over a mobile network.
Expect more of this sort of thing. Mobile carriers are all pretty worried about tales of the Motorola iTunes phones that could dominate the market. These devices would allow users to download music via their computers rather than paying the carriers to download music over a mobile network.