Motorola E1060 does not have iTunes
By Jon Gales -- News wires were
buzzing around the globe Monday about the
Motorola E1060 being the first Motorola phone to come with iTunes, but it has now been confirmed to
MobileTracker that the E1060 is
not the long-awaited iTunes phone. Read our extended report below.
While iTunes, the popular music jukebox software from Apple, was not mentioned in Motorola's E1060
announcement, major news organizations rolled with the iTunes story Monday afternoon (
MobileTracker also reported this story based on information contained in various reports, including
Reuters). Quoting
Reuters:
bq. The E1060 model which is aimed at music afficianados and which will feature iTunes Music Player of which Motorola said last year will become the default music player on Motorola handsets.
The
Reuters story set off wide-spread speculation across the web, especially on Macintosh and iPod enthusiast sites.
A Motorola spokesperson noted to
MobileTracker in an email early Wednesday morning that while iTunes was shown off with the E1060, this was a special case meant just for the demonstration. "E1060 was used to demonstate iTunes client; however, it is not our iTunes product."
Rich Brome, who is on site at the 3GSM conference in Cannes, also confirmed in an email early Wednesday that iTunes is not on the E1060.
Update: Rich notes on his site that the real iPhone will be announced in about a month (see end of article for CTIA info) and will ship in Q2. At the same time Motorola will announce the ROKR which should include a hard drive.
In an Apple-like fashion, Motorola is keeping the first iTunes enabled phone under very close wraps. While Motorola wanted to show off the software, it appears the company wanted to keep the device secret.
CTIA Wireless 2005 has been pointed to several times as a likely announcement date for the first iTunes phone. The conference takes place this year March 14-16th in New Orleans, LA.