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Audible.com, the leading provider of digital audiobooks, is branching out into over-the-air (OTA) distribution.  It announced last month a deal with Sony Ericsson to bundle a version of its audiobook application with new phones based on the Symbian and UIQ platforms. Compatible smartphones include the new P990, M600 and W950 Walkman phone.

The software will be available on CD and Memory Stick media, and it will include bundled try-and-buy audiobook content.  This includes five-minute samples of titles in four different languages (French, German, English, and Spanish), from popular works such as The Cell by Stephen King, Freakonomics by Stephen D. Levitt, J'peux pas plaire a tout le monde by Guy Carlier, Die Begnadigung by John Grisham and La Vida Secreta de las Abejas by Sue Monk Kidd.

Audible will also provide Sony Ericsson customers with a free 30-day trial to the its service.

Although Audible suggests that services will be available in the US, UK, France, and Germany, no mention is made of wireless carriers that will actually offer the service.

"Audible is already a best-selling digital audio service available for several other platforms on the market. This type of application benefits not only our W950 Walkman phone with its powerful media player, but the P990 and M600 phones as well, as different audiobook and news content can be targeted towards more business-oriented audiences," said Ulf Wretling, director and head of content planning & management at Sony Ericsson.

Audible.com got into the digital audiobook market early, with its own proprietary portable player and Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, and secured content licensing deals with publishers who considered audiobooks to be an uninteresting rounding error in the book market.   Then two things happened: Audible did a deal with Apple to make thousands of its audiobooks available over iTunes to iPods, and iPod accessory makers produced cheap devices for playing iPods through car stereos via FM radio signals.  As a result, the audiobook market exploded, and Audible found itself sitting on a goldmine of content licensing deals.

Although music is more popular, spoken-word content is an ideal trailblazer for OTA audio distribution in markets -- such as the US -- where the wireless telecom infrastructure is not well suited for full-fidelity music; spoken words have lower audio quality requirements.  With this deal, Audible joins Melodeo's Mobilcast mobile podcasting service (which includes podcasts from NPR, The New York Times, and ESPN) as the most interesting developments in a market that bears close watching -- at least as close, we would argue, as the OTA full-fidelity music market. 

With Audible and Melodeo, OTA spoken-word content is now available on devices from Motorola, Nokia, and Kyocera as well as Sony Ericsson.  Has Apple missed the boat by being late to market with a viable wireless iPod device?  Not necessarily.  Remember that licensed Internet music services existed before iTunes; Apple made them popular.

Adapted from DRM Watch