“You’ve got to hand it to the iPod competitors: They’re a determined lot. This week, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates weighed in on the still-growing popularity of Apple’s multiversioned line of personal music players, telling European media folks that the iPod is but a flash in the pan, soon to be replaced by mobile phones as the player of choice,” Mike Wendland writes for The Detroit Free Press. “To be sure, Gates is engaging in some wishful thinking. And his bravado was no doubt emboldened by this week’s unveiling of yet another Microsoft operating system, this one aimed at mobile phones and called Windows Mobile 5.0.”

“‘If you were to ask me which mobile device will take top place for listening to music, I’d bet on the mobile phone for sure,’ he said in the interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a German daily. Across the globe, Mac loyalists and iPod addicts pretty much scoffed in unison,” Wendland writes. “But I happen to think that Gates is probably going to be proven right in the long run.”

“Putting music players in a smartphone is a given. They’re available now, of course, with limited storage capacity and audio quality that is way short of what the iPod offers. But with the ability to download songs via wireless broadband coming to most parts of the country by year’s end, why would anyone want to carry both a standalone music player and a wireless phone? Memory storage issues have to be worked out better before such a phone will become a reality. But mark my words: It will be here sooner rather than later,” Wendland writes. “Anyone want to bet which company will introduce it? My money is on Apple.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Wendland’s correct. Why carry two devices when a single unit will do?

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