

Apple's mobile iTunes store will soon face competition from Amazon's MP3 store on Google's upcoming T-Mobile G1 device, pictured to the right – the first cellphone to run Google's Android mobile operating system.

Owners of the device will be able to browse, search, preview and purchase music on the Amazon MP3 store using the phone's cellular connection. In order for purchased MP3s to download, the phone must be connected via Wi-Fi. (The mobile iTunes store, on the other hand, remains completely offline without WiFi.)

"Amazon wants to make it easy for customers to discover, buy, andplay their music wherever they happen to be – whether sitting at theircomputer or on the go," stated Amazon digital music and video president Bill Carr. "We look forward to the release of theT-Mobile G1, which will put Amazon MP3's vast selection of low-pricedDRM-free music at the fingertips of even more customers in moreplaces." The phone is expected to go on sale next month.

This Amazon MP3 Store partnership, announced on Tuesday, speaks volumes about how hard it must be to launch a music store these days. With Apple's dominance of the space increasingly threatened by Amazon's 100 percent DRM-free approach to music (a result of concessions to the labels on variable pricing), there doesn't seem to be much room for another major new music store. Google seems to have decided it would be much easier to integrate with Amazon than to seek licensing from the labels and consumer mindshare on its own.

Like Apple, Google plans to offer an application store that toallow developers to take the device's music (and other) capabilities innew directions.

For years, Apple has remained the digital music market leader – in North America, anyway – by designing stuff that many listeners find easier and more pleasant touse. The T-Mobile G1 features a hardware QWERTY keyboard that slidesout from under the touchscreen. Windows Mobile and Blackberry userscould find the design more familiar than Apple's when they nextconsider upgrading.

As for this music store, the ability to queue up purchases for laterdownload via WiFi while on the go gives Google and Amazon an edge overiTunes. Plus, iPhone application developers have told Wired.com that onepoint of frustration with that device is that Apple doesn't give themaccess to the iPod application on the iPhone.

If Google allows third-party developers to design stuff for its application store that integratesmore tightly with the music store and player on T-Mobile G1 than Appledoes on the iPhone, Android-powered phones could develop other musical advantages over Jobs' device. For example, picture a mash-up ofShazam, GPS, timestamp and the camera that identifies songs you've identified and matches them with pictures takenin a similar time or place with the ability to buy any 30-second samples of unpurchased songs that are in the slideshow and other ideas along thoselines.)

Analysts expect the device to sell somewhere in the neighborhood of 250,000 to 400,000 units by the end of 2008 (by comparison, the iPhone sold one million units in the first 74 days.)

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(via Amazon; image from TMONews via Engadget)