"CONTENT, content, content". This has been the war cry of mobile phone makers for years.
Thus far, one thing has gotten in the way: digital rights management (DRM) or copyright protection. This means users can either transfer songs from one device to another for only a few times, or not at all, to protect record labels' revenue.
So the Singapore media's excitement was justified when Sony Ericsson said it was launching a new service that would let its phone users download music free of DRM.
When time came for the unveiling of its big secret two days ago, the Sony Ericsson music service dubbed PlayNow was nothing but a big let down.
PlayNow is essentially a kiosk, available at seven of its retail stores island-wide. Consumers plug in their Sony Ericsson phones, browse for content on a touch-screen, download music and movies to their handsets and pay for them with a stored-value card.
Why did Sony Ericsson take one step forward and two steps back?
DRM-free, notwithstanding, buying music over a kiosk rather than over the Internet is cumbersome at best.
With Singapore's household broadband penetration at over 90 per cent, who wants to make a trip down to a Sony Ericsson store to buy music whose format is compressed?
If I'm going out, I would rather head down to a HMV store for a high-quality CD, whose price is the same as what PlayNow offers (Sony Ericsson's music albums start at $19.99).
Even Nokia and Motorola understand this. That's why the online Nokia Music Store and Soundbuzz Mobile Store let people buy and download music to their phones via their computers.
Just when you think buying music over a kiosk is archaic, Sony Ericsson has to make a bad move worse by making users pay with a proprietary stored-value card.
And it is not compatible with the CashCard either.