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April 08, 2012

5 things I missed about our tech in the Philippines

For the last 3 weeks now, I’ve been to three European states and have seen and experienced the advancement of technology in these first-world countries. It’s oftentimes amazing but once in a while, I would miss the ones I enjoyed in the Philippines.

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January 31, 2012

Speck Wanderfolio Case for iPad 2

This new leather case (Speck Wanderfolio) for the iPad 2 might not be officially released in the Philippines but we got a sample unit to try out and eventually give away to readers.

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January 31, 2012

Tangram Smart Case 2 for the iPhone 4 and 4S

This new Smart Case 2 from Tangram arrived the other day and I immediately tried it out on my iPhone 4S. I am also told I can give one away to our readers here so head on below and check it out.

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January 18, 2012

MyMusicStore launched, are you buying?

A local music store was launched earlier tonight in an attempt to combat the growing trend of music piracy in the Philippines. MyMusicStore.com.ph is a collection of over 160,000 hit songs and OPMs with prices starting between Php20 to Php35 a pop.

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December 16, 2011

Official Globe iPhone 4S Postpaid Plans and Pricing

Globe Telecom hosted the Apple iPhone 4S launch at midnight at the Ayala Museum where the postpaid plans were revealed on the night itself with the first Globe iPhone 4S subscriber being The Philippine President himself.

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October 24, 2008

New Macbooks spotted at CEL

I’m blogging live here at CEL Manila. Event started at 10am this morning but I was a bit late. The first booth I visited was Apple, represented by local distributor Senco. Got some pictures of the new Macbook and Macbook Pro.

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March 02, 2008

Apple doesn’t want my 20 bucks!

One of the reasons why Apple didn’t really open up iTouch 3rd-party apps to the public was because it wanted to make money from it. This was made clear when it recently introduced new apps like the Mail, Google Maps, Stocks, Weather, and Notes then charged early adopters $19.99 for it.

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September 18, 2006

Will Filipinos buy music online?

Apple has been selling billions of songs online for over two years now thru iTunes. Yet, it has not been able to widen its market in a Asia Pacific region mainly because of high risk of copyright issues and prevalence of peer-to-peer sharing. I was actually curious before on how it works especially when downloadable videos came out but never got to try it because of the restrictions.

So, I was surprised that where iTunes failed to reach, Mobiuslive will take the risk and make the jump. The site was first reported over at PTB by Mike, while Luis confirmed he’s the one behind the development of the site and Inq7.net did a short story just a while ago. There’s actually no contest here since Apple does not want to make a presence here in the Philippines and the rest of greater Asia for that matter. The real competition here is between Mobiuslive and Fliptunes (by Mozcom).

So, we go back to the question: Will Filipinos buy music online? It’s a question I cannot categorically answer but considering our fondness for anything free, I doubt a significant number will get used to buying their music online. Let me throw in some scenarios:

  • Filipinos who do buy CD albums buy them not only because they love the music. They want to own a piece of it. Consider the CD a trophy. If you buy an MP3 copy online, there’s no trophy to be proud of that you can display in your CD rack in your room or in your car with the 12-disk CD changer.
  • Buying online might seem more convenient because you don’t have to physically go out and buy the CD. But wait, with the pre-paid card model (as against credit card), you do have to personally go out and buy credits. It now boils down to which of the two have a wider distribution arm.
  • Cross-over buyers could hurt album sales. Remember that the target market are those who buy the albums. You can’t convert those who are already hooked up with the free P2P so you could end up getting less sales from the CD albums because buyers can just get the 1 or 2 songs they really like and not buy the CD instead. Not good if the band/artist is rooting for a platinum or double-platinum record.
  • Since Mobiuslive allows for sharing downloaded songs with friends, it might tickle the “me too” mentality and you could end up with 1 buyer and 100 downloaders. I call it the “Wendy’s Salad Bar Phenomenon”.
  • There are torrents, MP3 IRC channels, Limewire, Kazaa and a host of others peer-to-peer networks. Mobiuslive is selling them at Php20 each. Hmmm… Twenty pesos? Free? Twenty pesos? Free?

Despite these possibilites, I have to give props to Mobius and Fliptunes for taking the risk. It’s just business after all.

Okay, I should stop here lest people would ask me where I got all those mp3s in my iPod.