Cell Phones With Hard Drives May Kill The iPod

[laarni080]

Cell phones and smart phones with hard disks will eventually significantly cut into sales of MP3 players, however, that that won't happen until prices come down.
"We're seeing the start of the trend now with some cell phones that have hard drives," some said. "But they're extremely expensive -- about $800. The vendors need those price points to start coming down so we can have adoption by consumers."
Another sticking point is that the cellular operators have started offering music services with which users can download music directly to their phones. However, like phones with hard drives, those services also are too expensive.
"The operators are most interested in the over-the-air download model". "But that model is still about three times as expensive than if you just get the music off of iTunes or something like that. With the move to 3G (faster cellular data access), the operators should be able to make sending music over the air without charging so much. But they'll also need to think in terms of not charging as much but charging for other related services. They need to be thinking about follow-on revenue instead of first-engagement revenue."
Such follow-on services could include video downloads that accompany downloaded music.
Another impediment is form factor. Currently, phones with hard drives, such as the Samsung SHG-i310 and Nokia's N91, are larger than other phones and getting them smaller will be a bit of a challenge.
"If you look at a phone and an MP3 player, they both have about the same form factor". "But the phone has to do voice and so much more."

[arppt01]

Most of the phone even basic moble sets offer mp3 support. It is the space that is costly. So if we have space in mobiles then iPod sales are going to be hit badly.

[SeeMe]

Most of the new phones are coming with a mini SD card slot. My new phone was free through Verizon - and it still has a slot. You can buy any size and store whatever you want on it - so I think we are already there as far as competition goes.

[laarni080]

All reactions are right, but for now we know that Ipod has a greater capacity because it can be up to 80GB disk space, maybe in the future they can also make a 80GB Memory Card for cellphones.

[arppt01]

iPod has been designed as MP3 player while if we look at normal mobile phones most manufacturers try to give as much functionality as possible. So there are both kind of possibilities. It will depend on the user what does he/she wants?

[loko]

As for myself, I wouldn't need to buy an iPod anymore as my mobile phone can hold up to 100 mp3s right now. And you can easily upload mp3 as easy as you can put it in you iPod.

[golfguru]

I would agree with this assessment. If my phone had a 2 or 3GB storage capacity, I would have no need to own an ipod. I'm sure we will see things like this in the near future.

[cingularguy]

If I had a cell phone with a large hard drive, I wouldn't buy an Ipod either. I would also like to see a better camera, so that I wouldn't have to have a digital camera as well.