Motorola Inc.'s iTunes music phone, developed with Apple Computer Inc. and unveiled last month in front of an audience of more than 500, may have flopped.Motorola Chief Executive Officer Ed Zander said he is disappointed with the phone's marketing and plans to fix it.``We got off to a little bit of a rough start,'' Zander said in an interview after Motorola reported on Oct. 18 that third- quarter profit tripled, driven by more-popular phones such as the Razr. ``People were looking for an iPod and that's not what it is. We may have missed the marketing message there.''
It would be cynical of me to suggest that this also has the effect of helping Apple demonstrate to the wireless carriers that, even when you hand over the software to a handset manufacturer, only Apple can create an iPod. It could make discussions with the "five orifices" easier for Jobs.
