Emerging handsets mimic iPods
Published: 02 Jul 2004 15:40 BST
Jingles on cellphones are going beyond ring tones, calling up a day when wireless devices might double as mini MP3 players with the potential to replace stand-alone products such as Apple's iPod.
A glimpse of the future could been seen this week here at Sun Microsystems' JavaOne conference, where Motorola displayed its newest mobile phone, done up like a discotheque.
Increasingly, companies are designing mobile phones that can double as MP3 players, hoping to appeal to consumers who want to minimise the number of devices they carry.
The sleek, candy bar-shaped E398 makes and receives calls like any other phone. But it also has a built-in MP3 player, vibrating stereo speakers, an oversized colour screen for playing MPEG-4 video clips and rhythmic flashing lights.
This kind of device is still rare in the United States, but some say the E398 and models like it point to a convergence between cellphones and MP3 players. The appetites of music companies have been whetted by the near-$4bn (£2.19bn) worldwide ringtone market, and cellphone download services are already beginning to launch in Asia and Europe.
"Music is portable, and what are wireless handsets but portable?" said Michael Goodman an analyst at The Yankee Group. "They see a great convergence in trends here."
Cellphones makers' drive to assimilate other products has been underway for years. Many phones now have calendars, calculators and other PDA-like organisational features. Video game features are the core of Nokia's N-Gage, and more and more phones are adding full video capability as well.
These moves have been spurred by wireless companies' need to find new sources of revenue to help defray massive investments they've made in the new "third generation" spectrum to allow more bandwidth for data services and ordinary voice calls, at a time when analysts predict that revenue from ordinary voice calls will plateau.
Music has been seen as a natural focus for convergence. Music files are small, and consumers increasingly want the ability to carry their music with them, a fact that wireless phone companies see as pointing in their favour.
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