Daniel Schulman, the head of Virgin Mobile USA, says handset manufacturers and mobile operators looking to make the network the only way to move music onto a handset are set to make a big mistake. “”I believe that ignoring the PC as an integral part of what at least the youth market accepts as its music experience is the wrong thing to do,” he says.

Schulman makes what should be an obvious point — that anybody wanting to do OTA downloads needs to me the experience “stellar”. It’s something I’ve hit on before: when users try things on their handsets that they’re used to doing on the wired Net, the quality of services and usability has to be on par with the wired services, because that’s what users will compare them to. “You can do it on your phone now” isn’t a reason to excuse poor design and user experience.