Apple To Sell Ringtones, Ebooks Via Wireless iPods

Apple Computers are on course to take a chunk from the mobile phone networks' lucrative ringtones business, as the US Patent and Trademark Office published this patent application which (according to the Register) "describes an iPod that's fully wireless enabled - but envisages it as a portable shopping cart rather than a device for sharing media.

It's sure to be read with great interest by lawyers at the giant cellular phone carriers. It also describes a method of tagging a digital media file on one device and network and downloading it to another device on another network. That's very similar to how Sprint and Verizon - to name but two - allow you to buy a song over the air, and then tag it for downloading to your PC when you get home."