Omnifone has launched with an all-you-can-eat over the air music download and news service called Musicstation. They've teamed up with major labels like Universal and 23 global network operators so far covering 40 countries and a potential of 690m subscribers.This looks like a serious contender to ipod/itunes/iphone - especially as the iphone doesn't support OTA downloading and isn't even available over here yet.
So Omnifone's Musicstation looks like it has a really neat interface and looks very usable, it's reasonably priced at £1.99 a week (although I wonder how much it will be in India or the US?), it has a broad back catalogue from the major labels, there are NO data charges due to their deals with the operators, works across a ton of phones, you get personalised news and it has the obligatory community features.
I wanted to see the service in action for myself, but of course, I've no idea how I actually get it on my phone and whether or not T-Mobile supports it in the UK. But I reckon, knowing that the Motorola Krazr for example has better sound quality than the ipod (and this came from a teenage die-hard ipod fan), that this could be a big problem for Apple if they get the marketing right.
As an aside, the management team includes Rob Lewis who I met many years ago when he worked at a b2b publisher with a friend of mine in Balham in South West London. After his stint there, he very sensibly, joined the dotcom world and launched silicon.com and now omnifone.
Via Mobile Entertainment
