After the latest Apple iPhone hype, Apple seems to have thrown everyone off guard with a new patent that focuses on a wireless iPod that could take on the carriers in the music download market. The patent discusses a "portable wireless device", which would be used "...to identify a digital media item on an online media store and mark it for download. The digital media item may then be downloaded at a later time when the user is able to connect to the online media store with a transfer device, typically a personal computer."

Apple patents mobile iPod

The patent goes on to discuss how the porable wireless device can be used to purchase ringtones and other mobile-phone content over a wireless network (either WiFi or cellular). Indeed, looking at the patent more closely, the device being discussed sounds like a mobile phone without the voice capabilities.

Apple, it seems, want to use the mobile networks as bit pipes, with a new mobile iPod acting as a new form of handset focused purely on content, and not on voice or communication. It sounds very much how a content company would view a mobile phone, and would threaten to deprive the networks of any chance of gaining extra revenue from music downloads at a stroke.

Mobile iPod as mobile bookmarking service

The only downside to Apple's device is that it involves the use of a computer to complete the purchase, thereby losing the immediacy of the mobile phone.

"A portable wireless device interacts with an online media store via a network, typically a cellular network, to select a digital media item of interest, which is marked for later review or purchase. Subsequent to this interaction, a second device, for example a personal computer connected to the Internet, is used to review the marked digital media item, or to download the marked digital media item if it has already been purchased. "

In other words, the device acts more as a bookmarking system, letting you store the identity of digital media that you may wish to purchase later whilst at your PC. Not quite as integrated as the mobile phone's way of doing things, of course, where you can select your tune of choice and download it immediately. However, the network operators' current downloading serivices have been a spectacular flop. Sales of mobile content are nothing like what they'd expected, as the amount they charge for tunes and ringtones far outweighs the convenience of immediate download.

Apple have clearly spotted a gap in the market, and the next gen iPod will, it seems, be wireless. Prepare yourselves for a completely new form of mobile phone - one without any voice capabilities whatsoever!

[Source: US patent office, via The Register]