“The iPod turned five in October to a hallelujah chorus of fawning bloggers. Apple has sold 67 million of them. The iPod now accounts for 40 cents of every revenue dollar at Apple, of which there should be 19 billion this year,” Stephane Fitch writes for Forbes.
“The iPod still trumps all comers on price, looks, capacity and features, but the assault on the White Fortress keeps coming,” Fitch writes.
“Samsung’s YP-T9B music player, which just debuted in South Korea at a reported $280 with 4 gigabytes of memory. It’s pricier than the Nano but offers this advantage: no wires. That’s sweet relief if you’ve ever sat up real quick and ripped the buds out of your ears or skied with the Nano’s cord snapping at your cheek,” Fitch writes. “Samsung is the first major manufacturer to embed a Bluetooth radio chip in an MP3 player, allowing it to broadcast to a pair of wireless stereo headphones.”
“If the T9B takes off, expect many others to follow its path to the door of microchip maker CSR of Cambridge, U.K. Its chips are in 60% of the world’s Bluetooth-capable devices,” Fitch writes. “Neither CSR nor Apple will comment on plans for a wireless iPod. Apple turned down CSR’s last two generations of Bluetooth chips, but the next is smaller, cheaper and twice as fast. Just what Jobs could be looking for.”
Full article here.
We’d love a Bluetooth iPod with no earphone wires, if the earphones worked well and were small enough.
Related articles:
RUMOR: Apple to announce wireless video iPod in ‘very near future’ – October 10, 2006
Report: Apple to bring out Bluetooth adapter for iPods – August 25, 2006
Logitech introduces wireless Bluetooth headphones for Apple iPod – June 22, 2005
Cut the cord with cordless iMuffs Bluetooth headset for Apple iPod and cell phone – May 25, 2005
RUMOR: Apple prepping Bluetooth iPod? – February 20, 2005
With no trendy white earphone wires, I won’t have to worry about getting mugged for my iPod now!
I’d feel a lot safer if they did this. Apple = <3
Rabid Dog is correct. The 2nd gen shuffle shows that the technology can be made small enough that the natural evolution will be to headphones that basically are the iPod. If anything is separate it will be a wireless controller – not a constant signal-sender that consumes battery life too quickly.