CES: WiderThan supports V Cast Music

Mobile entertainment developer WiderThan said this morning that the company had been chosen by Verizon Wireless as an application service provider for the new V Cast Music service announced by the carrier yesterday at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The WiderMusic Service Platform will host and maintain music content for Verizon Wireless, which wants to offer customers up to 1 million songs for download to PCs and mobile phones by this spring. The service is officially launching on Jan. 16.

WiderThan, founded six years ago in Seoul, South Korea, to help carrier SK Telecom offer mobile multimedia applications, encountered very few technical challenges in supporting the Verizon Wireless offering, said Jonathan Kim, vice president of the global business division of WiderThan. However, Kim said one of the more critical aspects of the service was having an efficient over-the-air download process.

"It's pretty quick," he said. "A download between 2 and 4 megabytes averages 15 to 45 seconds. You're not waiting around for it."

Kim also lauded Verizon's aggressive marketing and pricing of its service. V Cast Music will charge $1 per song, about equal to what iTunes and other music download services are offering, or $2 for an over-the-air mobile phone download. "They really priced it for an aggressive push to market," Kim said. "Everyone in the industry expected this launch, and other carriers will be very interested in how Verizon approaches this service."

WiderThan has been working with Verizon Wireless since 2001 with solutions such as ringtones, ringback tones and games. Jim Straight, vice president of wireless Internet and multimedia services for Verizon Wireless, said in a statement, "Our decision to engage WiderThan as a service provider for V Cast Music was easy, as WiderThan continues to be a strategic part of our commitment to stay ahead of wireless trends to meet our customers' needs."

In related news, other companies participating in the V Cast Music launch have been coming out in force since the press conference held by the carrier yesterday at CES. Samsung today announced the "re-release" of its SCH-a950 handset, which is capable of downloads, as well as song storage. Also, SanDisk announced new high-capacity flash memory cards to support the service.