Motorola Postpones iTunes Phone

Motorola told reporters at CeBIT Thursday to expect several iTunes phones over the next few months. While the company originally planned to release its iTunes compatible E790 model in Europe this summer, Motorola decided to hold off after talking with mobile phone operators.

Another iTunes phone, the ROKR, is expected to be shown off in Florida in a few weeks at a music event. The ROKR was originally scheduled to come out after the E790, but it now appears that the phone will be Motorola's first to support the new iTunes feature.

Motorola also said that some of the phones will have up to an eight hour song capacity, contradicting earlier statements by the company, as well as several rumors that stated Apple was putting the brakes on allowing more than a few songs on any non-Apple device.

Multimedia handsets are the current focus of many top mobile phone manufacturers. Sony Ericsson last week debuted the Walkman phone, while Nokia penned an agreement with Microsoft to put Windows Media Player on its handsets and is expected to have a music phone soon.

According to Motorola, the E790 will work on second-generation networks; the network capability of the ROKR is not known. Motorola did say, however, that it plans to release at least 16 3G handsets this year alone.