Audiobooks Unshackled:Direct Downloads Available to Windows Mobile Devices

New mobile console from OverDrive allows phone-based wireless access to audiobooks, music, and video.

Josh Hadro -- Library Journal, 09/09/2009

• OverDrive Console released for Windows Mobile operating system
• Audiobooks, music, and video downloadable "over the air"
• Applications in the works for leading smartphones like iPhone and BlackBerry

Last week, Sony hyped its new wireless ebook reader at an event held at the New York Public Library,  though little changed in terms of how library patrons (as opposed to consumers) download content onto their devices.

Today, however, patrons whose phones have the Windows Mobile operating system can wirelessly download audiobooks, music, and video—though not ebooks—using the new OverDrive Media Console for Windows Mobile. 

Instead of using a desktop Mac or PC as an intermediary for content, patrons use their smartphones, as long as they have a card from an OverDrive subscriber library. (There are some 9000 in North America, according to the company.)

Audiobooks, music, and videos comprise roughly a quarter of the more than 300,000 titles in the OverDrive catalog, but account for most patron downloads, said David Burleigh, director of marketing. To find local library materials available for checkout, patrons can use OverDrive's Download Library Search from their phones.

Windows Mobile minority
The Windows Mobile OverDrive Console software is compatible with millions of devices worldwide, though the number still pales in comparison to the number of units running leading smartphone operating systems.

According to Gartner, Windows Mobile trailed the other major smartphone operating systems with a 9% worldwide market share as of the second quarter of 2009, following Nokia's Symbian (51%), RIM's BlackBerry (18.7%), and Apple's iPhone (13.3%). According to Burleigh, development is also in the works for similar OverDrive Media Console software on BlackBerry phones, Google's Android platform, and the iPhone.

While most device platforms allow software to be downloaded from any number of sources, Apple is known to carefully consider which apps make it into the App Store, the only source of programs for the iPhone. In the past, Apple has disallowed submissions that come too close to an area in which the iPhone-maker itself does business. In the iTunes Store, Apple also sells ebooks directly through a partnership with Audible.com.

Burleigh indicated that the company has taken these and other similar concerns under consideration, but could not yet offer any specifics, or a timetable for expansion of wireless access.