You and the Phone and the Music

Apple Computer (Cupertino, Calif.) has introduced a cell phone capable of playing music and accessing iTunes and a tiny new iPod — thinner than a standard No. 2 pencil — that can hold 1000 songs.

Apple ceo Steve Jobs rolled out the Rokr (rhymes with “soccer”) at an invitation-only event in San Francisco yesterday for journalists and other guests. The introduction of the product had been expected since July 2004, when Motorola Inc. (Schaumburg, Ill.) and Apple announced plans to collaborate on a music-capable phone.

“Today, the talk ends and the music begins,” said Ralph de la Vega, chief operating officer at Cingular Wireless LLC (Atlanta), which will be the exclusive U.S. carrier of the phone.

The Rokr, which will be available starting this weekend, can hold about 100 songs. It has a color display for viewing album art and features built-in dual-stereo speakers, as well as stereo headphones that also serve as a mobile headset with microphones.

The iPod Nano is “1000 songs in your pocket and impossibly small,” Jobs said. “The iPod Nano is 80 percent smaller than the original iPod.” iPod Nano comes in two models — the 4GB iPod Nano holds up to 1000 songs and the 2GB iPod Nano holds up to 500 songs. They cost about $249 and $199, respectively.

“iPod Nano is the biggest revolution since the original iPod,” Jobs added. “iPod Nano is a full-featured iPod in an impossibly small size, and it’s going to change the rules for the entire portable music market.”

Apple said it sold nearly 6.2 million iPods between April and June of this year, representing 616 percent growth in iPod sales compared with the same time last year. Revenues totaled just $249,000 but included the introduction of the flash-based iPod shuffle, which sells for as little as $99 at many large retailers. D&M Holdings Inc. (Sagamihara, Japan), which makes the Rio music player, said last month that it is shuttering its portable digital-audio division.