Motorola to Show Off iRadio at CES
Motorola on Tuesday unveiled its plans for iRadio, an upcoming subscription radio service. iRadio would first run on the company's forthcoming Rokr E2 cell phone, due out in October of this year.
However, in a possible sign of early trouble with the Apple-Motorola partnership, the phone will not include the iTunes music software. The company had promised more phones with the feature included, but so far only one has been announced.
Users would pay about $7 USD per month to access the service, although the cost may vary depending on provider.
The first iRadio phone would be able to hold about 70 hours of music, Motorola said. Altogether, 435 commercial-free radio channels across several genres. These channels could be downloaded from the computer and then transferred to mobile phones, cars, or home stereos.
No announcement has been made about which carriers have signed up to offer iRadio to their subscribers. The service could make carriers additional money, Motorola says, as they could sell wireless music downloads based on tracks users hear on iRadio.
The iRadio service, along with other Motorola technologies, will be shown off at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.