MusicStation is fine tuned for Java handsets
Rating: Best kept secret behind mobile music download service
Chatting to Omnifone’s PR guru, Tim Hadley, provided a very interesting insight into how the company’s MusicStation offering came about. Key to the product’s whole existence is proprietary technology it calls its device adaptive architecture (DAA).
In essence, DAA automatically generates a Java client for any new handset it is loaded onto. Part of the software is a ‘detective’ which asks the target handset as many as 5,000 questions.
From the replies DAA builds a new client which Omnifone can be pretty sure will run efficiently on the new handset model.
All of this is key to Omnifone’s participation in mobile content delivery. If the service is to prove successful it needs to work on as many handsets as possible, Hadley says. And if MusicStation is to gain consumer acceptance, it must work well and easily.
Hadley points out that with this philosophy Omnifone was able to create a service which runs on the millions of music enabled handsets already shipped. Not just a handful of high end, 3G enabled smartphones but 2.5G, too.
Another fiendishly clever aspect to Omnifone is that it delivers music tracks in a file format appropriate to mobile handsets. So it utilises eACC rather than the less efficient MP3 format.
The benefits are obvious. With eACC you can download music eight times faster than with MP3 plus store eight times as many music tracks.
All of this technical background information was meant to convince me that Omnifone and MusicStation will survive the onslaught from myriads of rival offerings all claiming to be the best music delivery platform for mobile phones.
Actually, I’m convinced. It’s the little things that count. Like the ease with which you can restore your music library onto a new handset, having dropped its predecessor in the bath.
With rival products you have to go back to your PC, find all the music you wanted and then side-load it onto a memory card again.
What Omnifone is hoping is that word of mouth will convince consumers to access MusicStation. Given that Vodafone in the UK has just built a MusicStation subscription into some of its tariffs, I reckon this strategy may just well work.
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One Response to “MusicStation is fine tuned for Java handsets”
Interesting insight. Just wondering if the target mkt really wants to rent music as with Music Station’s model. Apparently the average teen now has 800 illegal songs on his/her iPod. Are we now saying that they need to pay to listen to music the may already digitally have (legally or otherwise) and if they want to stop the subscription, the music they’ve been listening to disappears. If Omniphone has a secret way of changing youth’s behaviour, could they turn their attention to knife obsession.
Comment made on June 26th, 2008 at 4:51 pmLeave a Comment