by Search Copywriter
D. Warburton
D. Warburton
Microsoft has informed wireless carriers that it is withdrawing the Musiwave mobile tunes service once their current contracts expire.In an exclusive report, the Register revealed that wireless operators were informed of Microsoft's decision by an open letter received on Wednesday 9 September.
Musiwave was acquired by Microsoft in November 2007 for $46 million. The Paris-based organisation drives mobile music, video and ringtone services in the UK, Europe, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, delivering more than 50 million downloads per year to mobile networks such as Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone. Musiwave also has licensing deals with major record labels for 3.3 million downloadable tracks from 250,000 artists.
It seems that by withdrawing its contracts, Microsoft intends Musiwave to be exclusive to its own Zune media player and Xbox 360 game console, similar to Apple's limitation of its iTunes service to the iPhone, iPod and iPod touch. It also seems likely that Musiwave will feature on Windows Mobile phones, which are set to feature Zune media software with the introduction of Windows Mobile 7 next year.
Both Microsoft and mobile phone companies operating Musiwave have declined to comment, with T-Mobile merely stating that it no longer operates Musiwave in the UK, though it may still use the service in other areas.
The only clue comes in the form of job listings posted by Microsoft for positions at its Musiwave subsidiary, based around incorporating the technology into the Zune Marketplace. One such job post states: "The Zune organization is making a strategic change from a 3rd party content provider to in-house.
"We need to rebuild, re-architect, and revitalize a content ingestion pipeline that powers the entire Zune business. And we have a very short time to do it."
Another explains: "We're building a team in Redmond to help power Zune Marketplace.
"This job would work towards the overall strategy and collaborate closely with the Zune Redmond team and the Musiwave Paris team."
By withdrawing its Musiwave service from wireless providers, Microsoft is opening the market up for competing services such as RealNetworks and Livewire Mobile.
