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Source:CenterNetworks

Rafat Ali over at PaidContent is reporting that RealNetworks has acquired Listen.com for $36 million in a cash and stock transaction. Earlier this year RealNetworks made an investment in Listen.com. Listen.com includes the Rhapsody music service.

Rafat notes, "As part of the agreement, Listen.com’s management team will be joining RealNetworks. CEO Sean Ryan will continue to lead the Listen.com team as VP of music services as part of the RealOne division. Rob Reid, founder of Listen.com, will join RealNetworks as VP of strategic development. Listen.com will remain in San Francisco and will continue to operate music services for its customers and distribution partners."

Rafat has more commentary on the distribution partners and what the deal means for Real — basically upsell potential for consumers into other Real services.

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Source:CenterNetworks

Next week the Apple iPhone 3G will be released and the lines will be long. I put together the video below to cover two topics: why I am not purchasing an iPhone 3G and why Apple is a brilliant company. Here are just a few notes from the video:

I won’t be purchasing the iPhone because it’s too expensive and because I found it hard to type. The Web browser and mobile applications will be awesome and that I will certainly miss, but my Samsung Ace matches it in all other areas. I found the Ace easier to type on, in fact I can write entire blog posts easily on the Ace whereas I was unable to on the iPhone. The cost difference in a nearly identical comparison is nearly $800 for the year and that’s just way too much to consider.

My take is that people with the iPhone beta (the current model) will likely upgrade to the iPhone 3G but Apple’s ability to draw in new customers will be limited.

The other part of the video covers why Apple is such a brilliant company. They have been able to create a new product lifecycle for mobile devices. Most people keep their mobile device at least 2 years which is the typical contract term. Apple has been able to push the iPod cycle into the mobile device world. Next year there will be a new iPhone and current iPhone fans will upgrade to get the new features. And the next year, and the next. I haven’t seen any major gadget blogs discussing this topic but it’s worth a look. It means that iPhone users will be locked into a contract for life (in Internet years) basically.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 5:52 pm and is filed under apple, mobile, iphone, Insights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.