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MP3-Enabled Phones Gain Popularity
by Anton Shilov [ 11/27/2006 | 12:25 PM ]

A little more than a year after the first phones with MP3 player enhancements hit the market, their selling numbers greatly exceed those of specialized mobile phones. Such market trend practically means that Apple iPhone and Microsoft Zune phone products are inevitable.

“Music-enabled phones already out-ship MP3 players by a factor of more than 2 to 1,” a report by Mark Kirstein of iSuppli reads.

Currently there are many phone models on the market, including Walkman-series from Sony Ericsson, Rokr-series from Motorola, Music Edition-phones from Nokia and others, which are tailored for music playback and which already pose very serious competition to Apple’s iPod and other music players. But in addition to outselling the specialized devices from companies like Apple or Creative Labs, MP3 phones may be a threat for music selling services like iTunes.

“The rising number of mobile music track downloads and the increasing sales of music-enabled phones as a competitive threat to broadband music and standalone MP3 players,” the report says.

Financial analysts have been talking about Apple iPod phone for several quarters now, as this type of product would be able to leverage the company’s digital media franchise as well as drive Apple’s sales up. Analysts from Prudential Equity Group recently indicated that there are two models coming, including one that has Wi-Fi capability. Microsoft also implied that the Zune-branded cell phone is also possible.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Related articles: xbitlabs.com , xbitlabs.com

not surprised, you can get a very good mp3 phone for the price of an ipod

i love my mp3 (LG VX8100) phone for several reasons.

1. it uses a smart media card that comes with a sleeve that lets it fit right into a smart media card reader.

2. i can have 1 gig of music on my person with no extra gadgets, or more if i bothered to get a bigger card.

3. i use my headphones, and get a beep when my phone rings. so, no missing the call because i had my headphones on.

4. it gives me a reason to keep track of my headphone set.

5. my LG VX8100 VCAST phone was the kind of business expense a mp3 player could never be, and my former client got me an eternal discount with verizon.

it's obvious that if you have to carry your phone every where and your mp3 player, the best solution is that

while this is an interesting topic, I would hazzard to guess that dig pic enable phones are outselling digital cameras by an even larger margin. Not because they take great pix, but because you can hardly get a phone without that feature on it. It is nice to have one gadget perform multiple functions as long as you don't mind the missing playlist controls, larger storage capacity, ?better sound output and longer battery life that a dedicated unit provides.

emanon,

while that solution is true of camera phones, pretty much every phone comes with a camera now... it is not even a factor in price on some models.

not all phones come with mp3 or other music features. that tech is much newer. I think two things are the cause. It's been two years and most people who are considered "buying" are really "upgrading" their cell phone or like I did, for a small fee more getting the better one that "comes with the new plan", which are options you don't get to do with a mp3 player. and for my case, the music quality on a phone is much closer to the quality of a dedicated player.

On the other hand, I have yet to see a cam phone that gets the same resolution as a 8 megapix digital SLR or that can record video as well as a decent 4.8 megapix handy-cam, but my onboard speakers and headphones are better than my girl's iPod ones.

Added funtionality must still function. I would bet that most people who get mp3 phones were more likely trying to get the phone with internet and email, and that one in alot of cases also has mp3 player functionality.

QUOTE(raum @ Nov 28 2006, 08:38 AM) Added funtionality must still function. I would bet that most people who get mp3 phones were more likely trying to get the phone with internet and email, and that one in alot of cases also has mp3 player functionality.
Exactly! Why does everything sound better the way you say it?! :monkey:

QUOTE(emanon @ Nov 28 2006, 09:16 AM) Exactly! Why does everything sound better the way you say it?! :monkey:

i appreciate the compliment! (if that is in fact what it was,..)

I suspect the reason why is because I am suffering from a mild savant mentality and spend far too much time coming up with things that sound prolific. /wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink.gif" />

or maybe i have read so many different proverbs and wisdom teachings some of it has rubbed off...

now, back to phones... you know what I *REALLY* would like to see on a phone as an added feature?

a business/credit card holder. Only like ten business cards or so. You know how many times I have looked for one? I would trade my camera for that "locket" type compartment.

What would you like to see?

it was a compliment.....

I like your business card idea.

I'd like to have a pda/phone that was not the size of a TV remote that would sync with my outlook calendar easily without making duplicate and/or randomly deleting appts.

As long as I am dreamin, it would have a decent size thumb/keyboard, and every night would automatically deposit $890,000 into my personal account by hacking into swiss banks while I was sleeping.

There's a small issue with mp3 enabled phones:

Battery lasting.

While the phone has an autonomy of over 200 hours in idle state, when you use the camera or when you play mp3s, basically you consume processing power aka battery.

Now, when you have to use a camera, the use of it, rarely exceeds 1-2 minutes and most of the times, you can still see the drain in battery. Imagine playing a series of songs in a trip through your phone. You'll end up without a cell within the first 30 minutes, ESPECIALLY if the mp3s are bigger (better encoding) which would mean that there's more processing power needed within the fixed time of the song!


Also, like emanon VERY VERY WELL pointed out (man, I had NEVER thought of that!), the sells of phones outnumber digicams and mp3 players ONLY because the phone itself is a "necesity" (to me, it's still under debate, whether a phone is a necesity for EACH AN EVERY SINGLE PERSON) and you can hardly find a phone these days that doesn't bear a camera and soon mp3 players.

Otherwise, I don't think that phones would be able to outnumber these specific-use devices.