GoMo News Exclusive: Rok Media Store throws down the gauntlet to iPod and itunes

by: admin Tuesday, February 27th, 2007

Rating: BETA Rok

ROK Media Store is heading into BETA and its aim is to turn every mobile phone with a removable memory card in to a video iPod.

Not limited to audio only and not limited to music videos - ROK Media Store will offer consumers the ability to upload their entire personal music and movie collections to their PC’s, protected by ROK’s patented DRM solution, and side-load the content to their memory cards for play on their mobile phones.
In addition, ROK Media Store will offer hundreds of movies, music videos and other content for online purchase (as per iTunes) for storage and play on their mobiles.
Put simply, ROK Media Store will be everything iTunes is for the iPod - but for the much larger market of the mobile phone.

Hmmmm. This sounded a bit too good to be true – so Chief Analyst of BKI Media and Editor of GoMo News Bena Roberts contacted Rok’s Bruce Renny to find out more.

The Low Down:

Bena: What is the aim of the Rok Media Store?
Bruce: To be the ultimate management tool for consumers mobile entertainment needs.
Bena: With what business model?
Bruce: The revenue model is exactly as per iTunes - whereby for each piece of content bought by the customer on ROK Media Store, the content owner receives a royalty and ROK take a %. Content will be provided by the major music labels, independant music labels, movie studios, TV production houses etc..going-forward.

Bena: How much?
Bruce: It’s free to upload your own personal collection of content to your handset via the website - and additional content may be purchased from the website. There are no data charges as all content bought is downloaded to your PC via broadband and side-loaded onto your memory card.

Bena: Any special device requirements?
Bruce: It works on all devices with a removable memory card capable of video play. That’s the vast majority of all handsets currently being sold.

Bena: Yes. But memory size continues to be a problem?
Bruce: Storage capacity depends on the data capacity of the memory card. However, we can compress and store approximately 80 music videos on a 128mb memory card and 160 onto a 256mb memory card - or hundreds of audio-only tracks. Approximately 10,000 audio tracks on a 1Gb memory card.

Bena: GoMo News has thought for a while that DRM sounds better than it is what is your DRM patent about?
Bruce: ROK’s patent lies in our ROK Player technology which stores copy-protected audio-visual content on memory cards for play on mobile phones.

Bena: How long is the BETA trial?
Bruce: The beta trial will last for the next 6-8 weeks before full launch.

GoMo News readers – check it out and feel free to blog your thoughts.