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Apple have partnered with Japanese company Softbank to develop a true iPod phone

According to local press reports, Apple Computer Inc. makers of the ever popular iPod line on music players have reached an agreement with third largest cellular carrier in Japan, Softbank Corp, who recently entered the wireless arena through its acquisition of Vodafone's Japanese unit.

Motorola's efforts so far on its two iterations of iPod like mobile phones, the Motorola ROKR E1 and Motorola ROKR E2 (still dragging it's heels over being released) have not been met with much excitement from consumers. We have detailed the problems with Motorolas executions of the iPhone idea in detail before in our articles titled Where to go next for the iPod mobile phone and Motorola ROKR E2 Unveiled.

Here's hoping that Softbank can have more success in developing the combination of an iPod and mobile phone in such a way that it grabs the publics attention. It is thought that the first models developed will appear during 2007 and will be 3G capable to allow fast over the air music downloads from the iTunes music store direct to the mobile.

While Europeans and Americans are perfectly happy to download music tracks on their home computers to then transfer to their mobile phones or music players, the Japanese market is vastly different with about 96 percent of the 268 million tracks downloaded in Japan in 2005 coming from mobile services. This means that by rolling out this project in Japan first should allow Apple to quickly see if the new mobile phone is a success in driving sales from iTunes.