Alltel and Melodeo in Partnership
This comes under the heading of “the customers don’t get it yet, so let’s make them pay”. Reuters has this article which is posted on Yahoo! News this morning regarding Alltel’s launch of a “new” service that allows downloads or streaming of podcasts directly to your cellphone.
While I agree that one has to develop a business model to support the use of new technologies, I’m concerned that the window of success here is about 6 months. Why not download the podcasts to your computer using a podcast client/reader and transfer the content over to the phone (Smartphone, etc) that will play the media?
Now, to Melodeo’s credit, they’ve built a podcast client that loads on the phones - but are people dying to get their mission critical podcasts to the second on the fly? In my opinion, we won’t be using this model a year from now. Just my 2 cents.