IPOD Killers!

There is an underground buzz that has been going around in the music industry of late. iPods and Mp3 players, even Discmans are running around scared. Cellphones have turned assassins and are ruthlessly gobbling up the market share of all of these players. Seriously though, cell phones keep getting smarter all the time. Already people who used to carry around two devices like a handheld (PDA) and cell phone have given up both and opted for a smartphone which can easily perform both these features. After the PDA's it is now the turn of the music players. Cell phones have some inherent advantages, users are afraid to carry about too many devices since that increases the chanves of loosing them. given an option everyone will go in for a device which can do all the things that the user wants. Already digital cameras are used only for special occassions or when you really need print quality photos, rest of the time it is the cell phone on which this duty falls. Other advantages included that being a tool for connectivity itself, it would be extremely easy to load new songs on to the phone. Example of this being that most phones today have bluetooth, GPRS, IR, USB and so many different options that the user is more then certain to have his pick. In case of music, the only factor that made users still opt in for Mp3 players was the lack of capacity. Even handsets that had built in Mp3 players seldom went above 32-64 Megabytes. This was a serious bottleneck for music fans. Higher capacity cards of 256 or 512 Megs were too slow to browse through and people decided to wait till technology caught on. And while Apple's iPod is considered a runaway success, its millions units sold annually pales in comparison to the hundreds of millions of mobile phones sold last year. The mobile industry is poised to grow exponentially. Another problem was that as playlists got longer, it became more difficult to find songs of your preference. It isnt exactly fun searching for songs through a long list without a pointer device like a mouse to aid you. As the world recognises the growing importance of a cell phone in areas other than simply talking, applications are rapidly being created so that each and every whim and fancy of the user is adhered to. A company in Seattle , Melodeo's has created a software which allows the user to browse through a long playlist, which may even go into hundreds without any trouble. Melodeo’s simple, intuitive user interface also makes it easy for users to shop, preview, purchase, play and store their selections. Users can navigate by artist, genre, song and album title among others, all with detailed information about each track—even album art.And their patented Powersearch technology makes it easy to type using the handset’s dialing pad, letting users find their tunes with a minimum of keystrokes. When you purchase a song, after selecting through the catalogue and listening to the ones you think are intersting, you can opt to go in for dual download. This means that you pay only once for the content, a higher quality version stays back on the PC while a smaller and easier to play one resides on the cell phone memory. Songs on cell phones are just one way in which the "handys" are taking over the world. Perhaps this is what was thought when Sci-Fi writers envisioned a product that would allow humans to be reachable anywhere on the planet (via video calls or voice calls), carry their data with them which would include music, work related stuff as well as emergency tracing service. Undoubtedly cell phones are not just iPod killers but are eating away into competiting devices at a phenomenal rate.