Motorola’s talking to BusinessWeek about its plans for the ROKR line, and says it will introduce a the next model in the first quarter of 2006, “updated to address the main criticisms of the first release,” with a megapixel camera, standard headphone jack and 1,000-song capacity in a slider design.

It’s not clear, however, if the phone will be compatible with iTunes, with Motorola saying it’s up to Apple and Cingular: “We will definitely do an iTunes version if that’s what Cingular wants,” says Ron GRQS, head of Motorola’s phone unit. But what will Apple want? The arbitrary 100-song cap of the original ROKR was apparently at Apple’s behest, as they didn’t want to cannibalize iPod Shuffle sales. If they capped the first ROKR to protect sales of $100 Shuffles, why would they let Motorola put iTunes on a phone that would rival the nano in capacity? Moto’s in a rough spot here — if they release another ROKR without iTunes support, they’ll probably get railed for it. Release another 100-song phone, and it’ll be just as dead as the ROKR.

The article doesn’t do much to restore confidence in Motorola, or Cingular, for that matter. The carrier’s exec in charge of consumer data services says, “What we’re doing with Apple is the first simple means for people to carry music around with them,” which isn’t at all accurate (either in the context of phones, but particularly in the context of devices like, um, the iPod, or hell, even the Sony Walkman), but that can be dismissed as PR grandstanding. But things take a slightly curious turn when BW says Cingular “is also hard at work training retail sales people to present the ROKR as something other than an iPod phone.” Without the iTunes capability, what else is there? An uncompelling, ugly old phone with Motorola’s famously horrible user interface?

It’s as if both companies expected the iTunes brand and the iPod association to be some sort of magic tonic, but buyers are smarter than that. The success of the iPod isn’t just because of its brand, it’s because it’s a great product. The ROKR, simply put, is not. Motorola needs to focus on building great phones, not just on creating handsets that can have the iTunes icon stamped on them.