Apple's Tim Cook provides recipe for iPhone success

Apple's ability to keep innovating and make the 'best' products is down to hiring people who want to make them and providing an atmosphere to challenge them to do so, Tim Cook, the company's chief operating officer, said yesterday. Cook's remarks came at the beginning of a Q&A session at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium, in which he discussed the forthcoming iPhone and the reasons behind many of the technology choices in the phone/iPod/communicator. Cook's boss, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, unveiled the iPhone at the beginning of the year, and yesterday Cook echoed Jobs' claim that it will revolutionise the phone market. ...more

BPI trumpets golden age for music downloads

The inclusion of downloads sales in the Official UK Chart will mark the beginning of a new 'golden age' for the British single, according to the BPI. The UK music industry body revealed today that downloads have boosted the sales of single tracks by 48 per cent in the first quarter of 2005 ahead of the launch of the new, combined chart on 17 April. Downloads sales are currently running at over 300,000 per week; just a year ago that figure was 20,000. ...more

The checked Czech 3G auction

Further ammunition for those who believe there has been massive over-bidding for 3G licences: the Czech government has now had to backtrack in its national auction. The Czech version of the now-notorious 3G bidding process was effectively boycotted by the leading Czech GSM operators last month, with the initial asking price deemed far too high for the size and maturity of the market. There were no takers for the first round of tender. ...more

Yahoo! launches music downloads service

The rapidly expanding Internet portal Yahoo! is set to take on iTunes and Napster with its own music subscription service. The company has announced a beta version of the Yahoo! Music Unlimited service from today. As part of the launch, US subscribers are offered a week's free subscription to the service that claims to have more than one million tracks encoded at 192Kbs available to download and play. ...more

MP3 players in trouble - again

A new row has erupted over the use of MP3 players - but don't think this has anything to do with the big five record companies and the downloading of copyrighted material. This time, canny students are using the players to cheat in exams. According to the South China Morning Press, The Hong Kong Examination Authority is considering banning students from listening to the players during exams. ...more