With the 3GSM show in Barcelona and CeBIT 2006 exhibition rounding off a good start of the year for mobile phones, some of the product launches started to make me question the very fate of specialised devices. Is multimedia convergence killing off more and more stand-alone devices? Are MP3 players the first to go under the knife?

CK Ng

Storage-packed Mobiles
In 3GSM and CeBIT, Samsung and Sony Ericsson each displayed very music enthusiasts’ dream phone: mobile phones with huge memory space. The latest Walkman series mobile phone from Sony Ericsson, the W950, features a built-in 4GB flash memory, while Samsung had yet another “World’s 1st” with a built-in 8GB hard drive mobile phone in SGH-i310. Sure, phones with massive storage space isn’t exactly a groundbreaking new idea, as the much delayed Nokia N91 is supposed to come with a built-in 4GB memory. There’s also the Sony Ericsson W900i with built-in 470MB space. Hitachi announced that in 2007, they will be producing 1-inch micro drives that have capacities up to 20GB. Just imagine a hard disk with that much capacity in the size of our 50 sen coin; pretty neat huh? With that much coming soon in the near future, what else can a MP3 player do that a mobile phone can’t possibly follow suit?

Everything Under the Sun
The focus now is not about how much storage space we will see in the near future, but what other features an MP3 player can incorporate. Also the MP3 player isn’t really going to be totally killed off, but it will become more and more an incorporated feature in other devices, such as smartphones/PDA phones, personal media players (PMP), and gaming devices such as PSP. Features found in dedicated MP3 players such as storage space, equalizer, sound quality and battery life will soon find its way into a multi-functional device. Just imagine a mobile phone that has a massive storage space, 3G, built-in camera, GPS…the things you can put into it are endless. With a mobile phone that may have built-in wireless LAN and/or 3G, downloading mobile content such as MP3s and videos into your phone is much easier and faster as compared to an MP3 player.



Lurking in the Dark
Mobile phone developers are quick to realize the speed of growth of mobile phones with large storage, and will definitely try and grab a big piece of pie while it’s hot. Already Sony Ericsson is rumoured to have placed their production of MP3 players on secondary production while concentrating on the Walkman series mobile phones instead. Motorola and Apple have been producing ROKR iTunes phones and aim to bring out more soon. It won’t be a surprise if we see more big names jumping on the bandwagon soon.

The Fightback Begins
The big MP3 brands have begun to take notice of the growing trend of multimedia phones, and are beginning to take countermeasures. For example, iPod has begun to shift its focus onto videos, hence the introduction of iPod Video. The same can even be said about Creative, with their launch of the Zen Vision PMP and Vision:M MP3 player that’s capable of video playback as well. Video content over the Internet has been selling at a healthy rate, with new shows being updated on a daily basis.

What the Future Holds
With that much going on, it excites me to see such high level of competition that’s going on. It can only do nothing but good to us consumers. Prices of mobile phones will be much more competitive, prices of standalone MP3 players will be dropping, more features will be embedded in both devices.

Bottomline
With Samsung setting the benchmark once again, expect a bright future for MP3 phones within the next few years as others will pose a serious challenge towards them. But in the meantime, we’ll just stick with our MP3 players as usual since our phone’s battery life is more important for making calls.