Apple moved on Wednesday to extend its dominance over the digital music
marketplace,
introducing a compact iPod called the nano and confirming a widely reported
digital
music partnership with Motorola and Cingular.

With his usual showmanship, Apple's chairman, Steven P. Jobs, saved the
introduction
of the new solid-state version of the iPod for last, slipping it from the
change
pocket of his blue jeans at the end of a press event at the Moscone
Convention
Center here.

The iPod nano, which stores either 500 or 1,000 songs and is priced at $199
and
$249, is intended to replace an existing model, the iPod Mini. The new
device
will be available in the United States, Japan and Europe this week.

"The iPod nano is the biggest revolution since the original iPod," Mr. Jobs
said.

In an interview after his presentation, he called the new player, which is
one
of the industry's smallest, a "bold gamble."

By replacing the Mini, which accounts for more than half of all iPods
currently
sold, the company risked a huge revenue shortfall if the new product had
been
delayed, Mr. Jobs said. Despite that risk, he said, the nano reflects
several
innovations.

He focused on the shift away from the small disk-drive storage device used
in
the iPod Mini to the solid-state flash memory at the heart of the nano. He
said
the custom chips and the miniaturized circuit board used in the nano had
also
been potential stumbling blocks.

"Entire factories were created to make this device," he said. "Overnight we
have
become the largest consumer of flash memory in the world." The flash memory
enables
the device to be smaller and more durable.

Mr. Jobs described an Apple "top 100" meeting earlier this year - a retreat
of
the company's top employees - where he urged those attending to take a big
risk
rather than fall into complacency in protecting the company's lead in
digital
music.

Other gambles that Apple might have taken - a video set-top box, a palmtop
device,
a portable video player - have yet to come to pass after waves of
speculation.
Still, several analysts concurred that Mr. Jobs was taking a significant
gamble
with the nano and said it was likely to be successful.

"It looks like a really hot product," said Michael Gartenberg, vice
president
and research director of Jupiter Research, a market research firm based in
Teaneck,
N.J.

The nano comes with a color screen and the company's distinctive click-wheel

navigation feature. It measures 1.6 by 3.5 inches and is a quarter-inch
thick;
the Mini, by comparison, is 2 by 3.6 inches and a half-inch thick. (The
comparably
priced Mini, however, offered slightly greater battery life than the nano -
18
hours versus 14 - and greater capacity, at 1,500 and 1,000 songs.)

Several analysts said that Apple had moved the introduction of the nano
ahead
to ensure it would be widely available for the holiday season.

Most of the event on Wednesday was devoted to the unveiling of a Motorola
cellphone
called the Rokr E1 (pronounced rocker), which will incorporate Apple's
iTunes
music software and be capable of storing 100 songs. The phone, long
anticipated,
will be available exclusively on the Cingular Wireless network in the United

States.

The phone, which will sell for $250, has a color display, but requires that
songs
be downloaded from an iTunes-equipped personal computer by a U.S.B. cable.
Cingular
will not offer an iTunes service for buying songs directly over a cellphone
connection.

Asked why the phone did not offer the possibility of purchasing music
directly,
Mr. Jobs said that the economics of wirelessly downloading songs to a
cellphone
would be different from buying them online, probably costing about $3 a
song,
though he did not elaborate.

Ron Garriques, president of Motorola's mobile devices division, said his
company
had not discussed the prospect of directly downloading music with Cingular.
Such
a service would not make sense until Cingular offered a higher-speed network

to allow faster downloading of data, including songs, something it is
expected
to do next year.

Cingular's chief operating officer, Ralph de la Vega, said he had used the
phone
as a music player continuously on a cross-country flight, then landed and
used
it for a one-hour conference call followed by three or four other calls
without
draining the battery.

In what appeared to be a direct challenge to the music industry, which has
been
struggling with him behind the scenes over Apple's growing influence in the
music
world, Mr. Jobs outlined in detail the strength of his digital music
business.

He said Apple had sold half a billion digital songs and had 85 percent of
the
world market for digital music sales. The iTunes music service is now
available
in 20 countries, he said.

He also noted that Apple had sold 6.2 million iPods of all models in the
third
quarter, comparing that figure to Sony's PlayStation Portable game machine,
which
sold two million during the same period.

In recent weeks, Mr. Jobs has been struggling with several of the major
music
companies over the prices of digital songs. He has been urging the industry
to
hold to the 99-cent price for songs.

Mr. Jobs said on Wednesday that he was pleased that the details surrounding
the
nano player had not surfaced prematurely in the press or on the Macintosh
rumor
sites on the Web.

"It would have broken my heart," he said.