Merrill Lynch Disses Motorola-Apple ROKR Phone

Today I received a research report from Merrill Lynch (ML) expressing disappointment with the new ROKR music phone released yesterday by Motorola and jointly developed with Apple. ML compares the $250 ROKR unfavorably to offerings by Nokia and Ericsson and expresses doubt that ROKR will become a major presence in the market.

For background, TMCnet has the following story about the introduction of the ROKR at:

Apple Launches New ITunes Phone and iPod

ML cites the following reasons for its thumbs-down on the new music phone:

+ The phone seems like a "poor compromise" held back by "Apple's concerns of cannibalizing its own product portfolio."

+ Poor capacity of only 512MB allows storage of only 100 songs. (Have to admit I was scratching my head over that one. 100 songs? Even my two-year-old Kyocera smartphone holds more than that.) ML says Nokia's music phone holds 3,000 songs.

+ "Outdated look and feel .... like one of its simple, low-end candy bar phones."

+ You have to hook up the ROKR to a computer to download songs, no over-the-air downloads.

+ Lack of a scroll button and external play, pause and forward buttons.

+ Low-end VGA camera versus 2 megapixels on Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones.

+ Cingular-only -- no service available via Verizon or T-Mobile.

Here's what the ROKR looks like:

ML's comments all certainly seem like valid criticisms. One possible defense I can think of is that the ROKR released yesterday might be just the first of a series. After all, Apple is just getting its feet wet in the puddle of mobile wireless. Could be that future releases will have much expanded storage capacity and functionality.

AB -- 9/8/05