Mobile Me, Apple's Entrance on the Mobile Communication Market?

After the monstrous failure of the long-awaited Motorola ROKR E1, Motorola and Apple said goodbye to each other and headed in separate directions.

The mobile phone company swallowed the ROKR E1 bitter pill and started working on the E2, hoping that it will make a good impression, while Apple… well, the Cupertino company seems to be determined to take the mobile problem into its own hands.

And so, on January 5 2006, it filed a request with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the "Mobile Me" term for four fields which cover a broad range of options.

If you asked us what Apple has in mind with this Mobile Me, we would say "everything", but let's take a closer look.

According to AppleInsider, one of the covered fields targets computing devices and includes terms like: computer data recovery; data analysis being computer services; computer programming; maintenance of computer software, computer and communications networks, and computer systems; research and development of computer hardware and software and so on, while de second one is related to the digital audio segment and includes terms like: providing digital music from local or global communications networks, including the internet, intranets, extranets, television, mobile communication, cellular and satellite networks, information relating to music entertainment, education, interactive entertainment and many others.

The last two fields are linked to electronic portable devices, including cell phones, and their associated software products and to telecommunication services. Here are a few keywords: digital audio players, including digital music players, and software related thereto; digital video players and software related thereto; MP3 players and software related thereto; handheld computers, personal digital assistants, telecommunication services; electronic transmission and retrieval of data, images, audio, video and documents, providing access to databases and local or global communications networks, including the internet, intranets, extranets, television, mobile communication, cellular, and satellite networks etc.

Let's review them and see what Apple has and what it doesn't have. Well, it has computing systems, with all the associated services, the digital players with all the associated services, the software applications, ranging from operating systems to photo editing products, in other words, almost everything.

Everything, except for cellular telephony and wireless download services.

As I said in the beginning of the article, Apple partnered with Motorola in this direction, but it was like testing the waters, because the company brought only a small part of its arsenal. The only thing the telecommunications giant got from Cupertino was iTunes. Users expected more, like the ability to wirelessly download audio content; instead they got a rather ordinary telephone able to store 100 songs.

It's also worth mentioning that although Motorola doesn't seem to stop talking about the new ROKR E2, which will allegedly feature iTunes, the tech specs don't say a word about this application.

In these circumstances, would it be too much to imagine, in the not so distant future, an Apple phone, able to store some gigs of music and allowing the users to wirelessly download songs directly from the onlines iTunes stores?