iPhone – Apple’s only hope?

The iPod. It wasn’t the first MP3 player out there… But it quickly turned out to be the best. A combination of ingenious design, successful marketing and great complimentary software made this little gadget a Holy Grail of electronics. Everyone, from Sony to Microsoft tried to introduce their own solutions, often portrayed as definite “iPod killers”. Yet, the iPod still outsells any other portable music device by a large margin. At first glance, it seems that nothing (not even Microsoft’s Zune) can threaten is dominance… But there’s one major factor. Cell phones. 

The first cell phones out there could not do a whole lot when they were introduced back in the seventies. Bulky and heavy as bricks, they were just barely suitable for portable use. But Moore’s law was in full effect – the devices got smaller, faster and more user-friendly. In 1997 Nokia introduces “Snake” – the first-ever cell phone game. Quickly, cell phones become powerful entertainment devices. In just a few years, it becomes possible to take pictures, record videos and watch all kinds of content using the same piece of hardware. The quality might not be that great… But let’s not forget about what happened when VHS was up against Betamax.

 Amongst many fancy features of today’s multimedia phones, audio playback clearly stands out. It doesn’t require additional hardware, as is the case with cameras. It doesn’t need a bigger screen, to make it suitable for video playback. When designed right, it doesn’t even need a new control scheme like some gaming-oriented handsets. In fact, stick a headphone jack onto any modern phone and its powerful CPU will supply crystal-clear sound. So what’s the problem? 

There’s a few. For starters, battery life is a real issue. The iPod Nano easily lasts twice as long as most music phones out there. Noone likes to see their phones die in the middle of the day… Moreover, music lovers require having lots of storage space and flash memory is not cheap. Putting a lot of gigabytes into a phone makes it much more expensive so proper marketing (like Sony Ericsson’s Walkman series) is essential. Lastly, iTunes had a lot to do with success of the iPod and no phone manufacturer was able to make it as easy to buy and play music. 

In the end of the day, I firmly believe that phones will win the war for the average music listener. It’s just more convenient to carry one device instead of two and not have to worry about wires (many new phones support Bluetooth-powered stereo headphones – a feature extremely uncommon in conventional mp3 players). Battery life, software (some Motorola phones already support iTunes!) and design will all improve and the consumers will see that phones are good enough for their portable music needs. Finally,  recent developments in mobile high-speed access should introduce impulse buying into the process. iPhone, where art thou?