How long does music on your mobile last?

During a fairly standard summary of the mobile music market, Aloysius Choong at CNet Asia has raised a point that I hadn’t thought about previously, even though I should have. “First, many people will probably want their downloaded songs to outlive their cell phones, the latter typically dumped after one to two years. As customers switch from a Nokia to a Motorola, for example, they will want to bring their complete song libraries with them.” Aside from what’s on your sim card moving content between mobile handsets is a pretty tricky affair. They might have bluetooth or IR, they might not. They might allow you to sync with your computer, but that doesn’t mean you can transfer data through there. You could send the content over the carrier network (assuming no DRM) but that would get pretty expensive. I think the subject hasn’t occured to me because the low memory space on a mobile phone meant you’d probably choose to replace a song before you replaced your handset. Now that manufacturers are chasing iPod that situation will change – and people will want an easy way to transfer songs (and other content) from mobile to mobile to PC.

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