Comments on: Mobiles Will Kill iPods and Video Cameras

By: Michael Smuga

Michael Smuga — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 18:18:23 +0000

I totally agree. Here’a another reason to consider: it’s not fair to compare integrating cell phones with cameras and with mp3 players. Phones haven’t had too big of an impact on the digital camera market for technical reasons. I haven’t seen a camera phone that would produce images that match photos taken with my Canon Powershot and therefore would never use a camera phone to take pictures that I want to save for generations (I do use it quite a lot to take pics of fun things that I share with my friends). Integrating MP3s with cell phones seems much easier, and therefore it’s possible to have a phone which plays mp3s as well as any other mp3 player; phones seem to pose a bigger threat to mp3 players than to digital cameras, at least for now.

By: Charles Hudson's Weblog

Charles Hudson's Weblog — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 03:30:11 +0000

Music Phones are to iPods as Blackberries are to Laptops…

I was reading this article on MobHappy about how “Mobiles Will Kill iPods and Video Cameras” earlier today. I agree with some (but not all) of the issues raised in this article. As the owner of a Sony Ericsson W800……

By: It’s hip2b2 » Blog Archive » Mobiles Displacing or Converging Digicams and iPods?

Thu, 23 Mar 2006 02:09:38 +0000

[...] There is some interesting discussion in Mobhappy about Mobiles Killing-off Music Players and Cameras. Nokia’s head of multimedia makes an aggressive stand stating this fact. However, Russell responds with: Nokia made a similarly apprently implausible claim back in 2000 about cameras. However, James at Moco News points out that the stand alone camera market didn‚Äôt in fact die and that the same will be true of MP3 players and video cameras. [...]

By: John

John — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 23:46:19 +0000

Although I’m still a dedicated device kind of guy, I do have handsets that can play music (which I rarely use), and I don’t have a standalone MP3 player (but my son has a shuffle).

Enough storage on the handset is part of the equation, but I’m wondering about battery life. With voice, data and multimedia, how do these new music playing handsets stack up in terms of battery usage?

The reason I ask is because I’ve been trying a multimedia phone from Samsung and so far after light to medium voice usage (60 minutes), and some web browsing and multimedia, the battery runs out at the end of the day. Is this handset an anomaly?

By: Russell Buckley

Russell Buckley — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 20:23:36 +0000

Alex – I understood that Apple’s reason to be in this market is to sell iPods. iTunes alone is barely profitable, if not loss making. So take away iPod sales and there’s no business model.

Are you suggesting, by your paying attention jibe, that this is wrong? Any evidence to support it? I’m happy to be corrected.

But if you’re half right and they just used the iPod to get iTunes in play, the only conclusion is that they will have to raise prices to make it profitable, which I reckon would see people abandoning it in droves.

Russel

By: Anthony

Anthony — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 20:21:09 +0000

I saw the same report and virtually right next to it was a research company claiming that Apple will be shipping $4.2Bn wireless Ipods by 2010. How they get to this figure is a mystery but interesting idea.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21032006/101/apple-ship-4-2b-worth-wireless-ipods-2010.html

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 19:58:42 +0000

If you’d paid attention to Apple, you’d realise the iPod was the trojan into the iTunes Music Store (not the other way around). They always expected the iPod to become less popular eventually, but they needed a way to draw people into the store initially.

By: Ian Wood

Ian Wood — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 18:43:50 +0000

Russell have to say that the W950 was the standout device from this years 3GSM.

Talking with the Sony guys here in London they are saying that the aggressive strategy that Sony has adopted in Japan against iTunes has started to pay dividends. The company has learnt from its failure of Betamax that it’s the content that wins the battle. An thus it is holding back tracks for exclussive distribution on the Connect platform. The new DisktoPhone software will see the W950 become an MP3 players that happens to make/take calls. The interesting thing is that SE decided that they do not need to add a camera to the device.

Looking around the Mobile Networks executives over the past three months and most are using the SE W800 has their personal phone and so I think it is true that amoung the “adults” a music phone is more likely to be used rather than two seperate devices. If this is true then we can say that the iPod could follow the same path as PDAs and be restricted to a small niche.

Anyway I guess that Anssi needs to go and engage ideo so that Nokia finally has a handset that people will start buying again. The teenagers that I know were asking me to buy either a Pink Motorola or a Samsung handset as a Christmas present and whilst they said that they found using a Nokia easy it just did not float their boat.