Virgin planning mobile iPOD?

VIRGIN MOBILE really has kissed and made up with T-Mobile because details of a scheme to sell music to mobile handset owners have leaked out, according to Tony Glover writing in The Business.

Glover doesn't know what the new service will be called but it seems to be utilising handsets with build-in digital music players supplied by Samsung and Nokia.

They'll be Mobile IPODs, then. The objective is to subsidise these handsets (as is normal in the UK market) which will allow Virgin Mobile to retail them for far less than the approximately $450 which an Apple iPOD currently costs in the UK.

The intended service will only be feasible if Virgin Mobile can take advantage of the GPRS (and then 3G) capabilities which T-Mobile's GSM network can support.

So T-Mobile must have given Branson the nod, then. Rival British network, O2, can already claim to be offering a very similar service but the drawback is that customers must purchase a special 02 Digital Music Player which costs £99 and presently works with a restricted number of Siemens, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Nokia handsets.

It's a clever move by Virgin since although the group sold Virgin Records to Thorn-EMI years ago, it can easily promote the service via the Virgin Megastores and the brilliant Virgin V festivals. µ