AudibleAir: A Great New Service… So Long As You Use a Treo

Since upgrading to the iPhone 3G I rarely sync my devices anymore. In fact, since my email, contacts and calendar sync over the air now (so long as MobileMe is working), the only reason for me to perform a physical sync is to back up apps I downloaded directly to my device and to transfer new podcasts and audiobooks from my Mac.

I am a big fan of audio books and have subscribed to Audible.com, the DRM’ed Audio Book service, for a few years now. DRM may be "evil" as Jamie put it yesterday, but you can’t beat the content.

Now word comes that Audible has begun AudibleAir, a service to stream your Audible content directly to your phone.

Audible’s ad says it all-

Give your phone something to say. Now all of the great content at audible.com is available to you on your cell phone. No matter where you go, you can wirelessly and automatically download spoken word audio to your mobile phone. So who’s to say that important call on the other line isn’t something you really, really want to listen to? Take your bookshelf with you. AudibleAir makes managing and accessing your audible.com audio effortless and sensible. From newspaper delivery to your favorite periodicals that update themselves to audiobook chapters that download as you need them and delete themselves after you’ve listened to them, this is technology the way it was meant to work. This is AudibleAir.

Great! Right?!? NOT SO FAST…

Unfortunately, a quick look at the (exceptionally long) list of supported devices reveals the following…

Palm Treo 600- check.

Motorola MPX220- check

I-mate JAM- check

iPhone- NOPE

Yup, the long and seemingly extensive list is clearly missing is the iPhone. No resident app is currently available for it and while there is an option to run the service on devices that are not "officially" supported, it won’t work on the iPhone. In fact, a search through the "Help" section of Audible’s site failed to bring up even one post that included both "AudbleAir" and "iPhone".

It could be that an app is in the works and will eventually be released. If that is the case we won’t actually know it until it happens. There may, however, be something else going on here.

You see, Audible was recently acquired by Amazon and Amazon is increasingly a competitor to Apple in a variety of areas including music downloads and, potentially, eBooks. (Having eReader on the iPhone is great and if Apple releases a slightly larger device it will certainly impact the Kindle). Is that the reason the iPhone/Touch is conspicuously absent?

Who knows. What I do know is that streaming my Audible content straight to my iPhone would be great since it would mean one less reason to need a physical sync. For now, though… where did I leave that cable???