“Perhaps the biggest threat to Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod and the portable music player industry is a device already nestling in a billion pockets: the mobile phone. Sales of cellphones that can store and play back music are climbing, raising hopes among handset producers like Sony Ericsson and Motorola Inc. that it will be their next growth driver. Music phones may never kill off the market for the stand-alone music players of Apple, Sony, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Reigncom Ltd. and others, but they could dent the market’s potential,” Nathan Layne reports for Reuters.
“Apple controls 55 percent of the global MP3 player market and has a 70 percent U.S. market share. It also reaps profits from the millions of songs sold through its iTunes online music store,” Layne reports. “But its battle with the cellphone threat continues. Motorola launched handsets late last year that play digital music files supplied by Apple’s iTunes, but a low storage capacity and bulky design have cramped sales.”
MacDailyNews Note: The newest Motorola iTunes phone, the SLVR, isn’t bulky (it’s thinner than the RAZR), but still suffers from the artificial 100-song limit.
Layne continues, “Still, Apple has a powerful market share weapon in its more advanced video iPod’s and is by no means sitting on its hands. And Kirk Yang, a managing director and technology analyst at Citigroup’s Asia Pacific operations, reckons Apple will likely come out with an iPod that can double as a cellphone later this year to counter the music phone offensive. ‘The iPod with phone functionality is going to be a category killer,’ Yang said at the Summit in Hong Kong.”
Full article here.
[Attribution: Macworld UK]
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The iPod will pass, everything does
YES PLEASE!!!
I want one!!!
I’d buy one immediately.
A phone will never have a 4″ screen with a touch sensitive scroll wheel.
4″ iPod info:
http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0603videoipod.html
Remember the old rotary phones? Imagine something similar to that appearing on a touch screen.
Sounds and Looks Phony.
Remember the old rotary phones? Imagine something similar to that appearing on a touch screen.
How about one with a crank handle like the one I had in Donegal, Ireland, when my number was 35, and if I made a call in the night I had to wake the owner of the only store up!
I’ll be getting the ROKR E2. Even though it doesn’t support iTunes it plays unprotected AACs, has a capacity up to 2GB and has stereo Bluetooth!
I’m waiting for a direct cerebral link before I upgrade either my phone or iPod or PowerBook.
Long live the PowerBook brand! Say NoBook to MacBook. Honestly, what’s wrong with PowerBook, it’s still a great name, unlike i-this and x-that. That naming convention is so 20th century. PowerBook is timeless.
When I inevitably get a MacBook (blah!) Pro, I’m going to cut off the name plate of my PowerBook G4 and stick it over MacBook (ug!) Pro. I’m going to scratch the name off and burn the shavings.
Steve, why, WHY?! At first I was ok with it, but now… I think Steve’s ego is starting to run away from is better sense. First MacBook, then iBoom, or whatever that monstrocity is called. Choose your press events wisely.
Where’s my new iBook, Steve? The i in iBook makes sense now that it’ll have an Intel processor, but they’ll probably change the name to BarneyBook or something lame.
Let the “INQ” print that rant!
There will be no iPhone</b>
The cell phone market is saturated and extremely competitive, Apple likes to develop new markets and control them as long as possible.
The carrier companies are the major players, the phone makers kiss their @$$es, that’s not a place Apple (really Steve Jobs) wants to find itself.
People invest in a product and it takes time for them to switch. Look how hard it is to get Windows users to switch to a Mac.
Even if the Mac faithful run out and buy a iPhone, there already are devices that will play iTunes on a phone. The option for the iPhone has been handed to us already.
Ok after all that comes these problems
1: Battery life. I talked to others who need their phone to be a phone, not to drain the battery listening to music.
2: Music selection. Carrier companies want to charge many dollars for each song to make a profit, not a mere 99¢ loss leader to sell a device a customer already owns.
There is no market for a iPhone, and Apple, in it’s usual fashion, would make some f-ugly white plastic throwback design model from a 1960’s era wannabe futuristic 2001 Space Odesssy crap.
Category killer? iPod killer? Any inane tech. analysis killers out there?
So much violence and bloodshed lately. Think of the children.
Who’s is going to market the iPod Phone? Not Verizon. Sprint? not likely. They have partial deal with Cingular so that might work.
With so many of the cellular companies trying to go into the music business as well, an Apple phone may have a tough time getting into the market.
this raises the question: would it make more sense for Apple to make both a phone iPod and a video iPod or one device that does both?
Somehow i think MDN’s idea of an iPhone shell into which you can drop your nano makes sense but Apple rarely forgoes an opportunity to sell people a new iPod. As such i think that a new iPhone (iPod w/ phone features) could keep the nano’s size, but obviously could not do video on such a small screen.
Maybe a slim iPhone iPod w/ 4 GB flash drive at around $299 and a full blown video iPod with iPhone built in and a 80 GB HD at $499?
Yeah, I want an iPhone (scratch-proof, it must be) … but I don’t care for it to play music.
MacDude, your post was unusually well thought out and you had me agreeing with you totally–till the end part where your credibility just tanked.
Less is More said: “(scratch-proof, it must be)”
I agree! But are you channeling Yoda today?
“But its battle with the cellphone threat continues.”
If Apple’s “battling” a “threat”, why did it help Motorola produce an iTunes phone?
The author’s grossly oversimplifying the situation. Apple seems to understand that it’s not necessarily an either-or situation. The author clearly doesn’t.
“The iPod will pass, everything does”
..yep..that’s why I stick with AAPL…they know how to reinvent faster and better than anyone else.
Steve J…”The mini is our best seller…so today…we’re obsoleting it”…etc.etc.
MacDude: you do talk utter crap most of the time, but you are sometimes quite funny..
Anyway who is to say Apple couldn’t control a nice chunk of the phone market? Who’s to say they aren’t developing the mobile touchscreen OSX? Why shouldn’t they be working on the next gen Newton/iPod/iPhone?
Battery life is an issue now but technology is moving on which will solve that issue. At least it’s not a reason not for them not to enter a market.
I just hope Apple keeps creating enough cashflow to fund both development of existing products as well as new ones. I don’t want new ones at the expense of existing ones.
Too many words, words, words…
Macdude — I’d buy one tomorrow…
i bet it’s Apple that enforced the 100-song rule. BASTARDS!
I HATE CELL PHONES!!!!!!!!
Why is everyone so fixated on apple coming out with a phone? It’s the dumbest idea EVER! I’m getting so sick of wathing people walk around wearing those supid headsets like they’re soooooo ready as soon as a phone call comes in. Blech!
MDN word: end
put an end to frivolous and annoying cell phone use
Sputnik was promoted from MS blogtroll to somewhere in MS mighty Marketing Deptartment. MacDude is his replacement. Must be nice to be a professional snark.
I’d buy an iPhone today if they came out, even if Rev 1 will look like crap in 3 years.
Why an iphone? Because the US Cell market paradigm is a nightmare (I know, I do level 2 for the second biggest). Apple would do it different. with MVNO, now they can. My company’s music service is an abomination- an ungodly mold of Windows DRM, crappy hardware that works 63% of the time, limitations galore, unleashed on the mostly luddite public of cell phone users who don’t use computers (and therefore would not use itunes (ie: getting the music off the phone)- cingular’s slvr is in my mind the best in category because it links with software that works). Iphone. Make it flexible and shift some paradigms.