Motorola puts podcasts on phones

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Podcasts are about to go wireless – this week, Motorola hooked up with Yahoo at 3GSM in Barcelona this week to demonstrate the first ever mobile podcast.

The demo was shown off on a Motorola RAZR V3x (pictured above) but could work on any Moto handset with the right software. You can either drag and drop podcasts from your PC straight to your mobile with Yahoo’s Music Engine software or – and this is by far the more seductive option – download podcasts over-the-air direct to your handset. Might we suggest the Stuff podcast as your first port of call?

You certainly won’t be short of other content to download. Podcasting is becoming a serious business, as demonstrated by Radio 4 telling us today that it’s giving the podcast treatment to 29 of its radio shows. You’ll be able to get podcasted versions of, amongst others, the World Service hourly news bulletin, Woman’s Hour, Front Row and Today in Parliament. All of the programmes will be available as downloads and podcasts at bbc.co.uk/radio between now and June.

Back in Barcelona, Motorola’s been doing a whole lotta schmoozing. Later this year, it’ll add DRM-ed Windows Media Audio support to it’s a selection of phones, meaning you’ll be able to play tunes bought from Napster, Virgin and other music stores. The move’s an obvious rebuke to Apple, which single-handedly ruined the prospects of the first iTunes phone by launching the iPod Nano at the same time.

Motorola is also joining BT Fusion this autumn by adding its classy A910 clamshell to the next gen phone service. When you’re out and about, the mobile uses BT’s masts; when you return home, it makes cheap calls by Bluetoothing up to BT Fusion’s broadband hub. The A910’s ace, however, is that it’ll also use Wi-Fi to make discounted calls at hotspots in the wild, provided they’re run by BT Openzone.

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