It's all very well Apple announcing 100 million iPods sold since the first player hit the market in late 2001, but when you compare it to Nokia, who sold over 80 million smartphone devices with music and video capability in the last tweleve months, you realise that while it might have the zeitgeist, the iPod is quite clearly no longer the top selling family of music devices.
Read on in the full article.
very nice!
Its all well and good to quote Nokia Sales figures (I have a 6682 so I'm not a hater) but of all of those phones sold exactly how many are being used for music? Its a bit misleading to compare the two because while a S60 phone can play music, the ipod is designed for music ergo a person buying an ipod is going to listen to it while a s60 user is more likely to make calls and access messages.
But having a mp3 player in a phone I wont buy an iPod. It would be money waste.
I bought a 3250 as an mp3 player replacement, but it's just not good enough to use as an mp3 player.
Having a new N95, my iPod nano has been relegated to the bottom of the bag, and will probably only be used in the car. I like the N95's ability to play music to my headphones wirelessly. So although the iPod has better storage and battery life (20+ hours play time), at the moment the N95 wins on convenience. (I dare say that this may change once I've had to transfer music to it one too many times 😊 )
well - in todays metro - i read that too - but 50 million of those are in the last year - also how many 'smart' phones are used in 'dumb' mode other than the camera.
theres room for both - its different markets.
Hhmmmm....
Strange comparison - may as well compare that with the number of chronographs or just plain wristwatches sold.
"Its all well and good to quote Nokia Sales figures (I have a 6682 so I'm not a hater) but of all of those phones sold exactly how many are being used for music? Its a bit misleading to compare the two because while a S60 phone can play music, the ipod is designed for music ergo a person buying an ipod is going to listen to it while a s60 user is more likely to make calls and access messages."
Couldn't agree more.
I love my E61, but after using it for music for a couple of months I was forced to conclude that it's really a pretty poor music player, so I bought an 8 GB iPod nano. The iPod is better in a number of ways: higher capacity, capacity isn't reduced by non-music files, no need for a headphone adapter, seamless iTunes integration, faster syncing, sync process is automated and configurable (smart playlists are really sweet), better controls (click wheel), better battery life (and if it runs flat it doesn't deprive me the ability to to use my phone), much better audio quality, and a more intuitive interface. The whole experience is just much, much better. I don't use the E61 to play music at all now.
The truth of statement "the iPod is quite clearly no longer the top selling family of music devices" probably rests on how you define 'music devices' (on the basis capability or use). Less ambiguous would be: "the iPod is quite clearly no longer the top selling family devices capable of playing music". The assertion "iPods are the portable devices most often used to play music" may or may not be true, but sales figures are insufficient to make this judgement.
I'd hate to think that Nokia will rest on its laurels in this area. The N95 clearly addresses some of the deficiencies I've note above, but equally there are others that it doesn't (and battery life is probably worse than the E61). I hope the iPhone kicks them a bit further in the right direction.
Pointless way of looking at it.
Well, from a personal perspective, I identified with this article.
As soon as a decent music player was released for the E61 ("THANK YOU" to those nice people at Oggplay) I gave my iPod to a friend & never looked back. The headphone adapter was a small price to pay for convergence.
My P990 with LCS Jukebox, a 4gb card and a pair of stereo bluetooth headphones is more than perfect for my music needs (and also video)
What a retarded article. Anyways the iPhone will finish off Nokia's multimedia dreams for good.
By the way, could Apple not just put a bluetooth in iPods and have a wireless bluetooth stere headset sold as accessory? Why haven't they done so already? Does the iPhone have bluetooth stereo profile?
Macboy, let's just wait and see.. 😊
"What a retarded article."
How pleasant you are...
"Anyways the iPhone will finish off Nokia's multimedia dreams for good."
I wouldn't be so sure. You will *only* be able to buy the iPhone with a contract (in the US at least). It also appears to be a closed platform, so it hardly counts as a converged device if you can't install 3rd part apps.
I like the look of the iPhone, and I have 2 iPods, but I do not see the iPhone replacing the offerings from Nokia, Sony Ericsson etc. any time soon. If I were Nokia I would not exactly be quaking in my boots about the impending (or not) coming of the iPhone...
Have to say that the iPhone is certainly riling AAS. This MP3 phone vs. iPod thread has been going on for a dogs age but it was never really discussed in these forums. Now suddenly it is front page news. The "fated"super success of th iPhone is bothering phone brand devotees (I say fated because until it launches it is vapor-ware and I have never heard of a demonstrator phone with so many applications missing launching on time).
In the end the iPhone doesn't matter in the medium term to mobile industry. The iPhone will be a rampant success in the US. Nokia N-series and SE Walkman just do not have the brand presence to compete and Motorola's efforts have been lackluster recently. MS Mobile phones are considered business centric devices.
By the time it hits Europe it will already be 3-5 generations behind in features and it will cost too much - comparing the spec the iPhone should have launched last year. There will be a few chavs and Apple fanatics who will buy it but it will be old hat.
The question is what will the 2nd edition iPhone look like and whether there will be CDMA version. Apple will have to compete on features for each future generation rather than industrial design and it is notoriously poor at doing this. Look at the changes in each successive Mac or iPod generation. In most cases it has been re-packaging.
lark wrote:Apple will have to compete on features for each future generation rather than industrial design and it is notoriously poor at doing this. Look at the changes in each successive Mac or iPod generation. In most cases it has been re-packaging.
On the other hand, no 3G in Phones for Europe really would be crazy. It's not like most providers have an EDGE network for the iPhone to fall back on (unlike Cingular in the US).
I think Apple aim to do the same thing with the iPhone: a smaller number of well-executed functions rather than many that aren't done so well. I don't know if the iPhone(s) will deliver, but I'm pretty sure that's what's they're aiming at.
You're probably right, which makes the decision to run the iPhone on OSX all the more mystifying....
"You're probably right, which makes the decision to run the iPhone on OSX all the more mystifying...."
Perhaps that's what it takes to have that really cool UI?
Well the iPhone will contain the full-fledged iPod software and more, gapless playback(!), smart folders, cover flow, iTunes integration etc. Nokia's Music Player is a turd compared to this.
Macboy, his divinity Steve Jobs would slap you with a wet mackerel for being an Apple fan-boy that just reeled off 4 techy things that the average punter has absolutely no idea about (except iTunes integration).
The thing everyone forgets is that AAS forum participants and most of the Apple forum participants/fanboys are NOT THE MARKET. We are too techno-savvy and make up 1-5% of the market. The brilliance of the ipod is that it made MP3 easy enough for the other 95%.
So it doesn't matter if the phone music player is crap. It just has to play music and be cheap.
I see a lot of iPods in London. The problem is that they are generally held by professionals in their late 20's to early 30's. A nice demographic to be sure. But I see a LOT more phones (dumb phones and smart phones) pumping out music in the hands of teenagers (unfortunately obnoxiously over the speakerphone at the back of the bus).
That's why the iPhone doesn't matter long term unless the next generation is cheap and good; the current one is already dead. No kid under the age of 17 is going to buy an iPhone unless their dad is a investment banker or just for the bragging factor. Kids prefer T9 to QWERTY, want big megapixel cameras to vid their friends and will get pissed off the first time they look at the touch screen in sunlight and can't make a call (look at LG Prada reviews) and finally they don't give a toss about WiFi. I am generalizing but that is the demographic.
OTOH you have to remember that Apple is a US centric company. And the US is generally about 2-4 years behind the ROW in mobile phone usage habits so the iPhone works in that market. Anything they sell in Europe is just cream. They will be fine if iPhone flops in Europe this generation.