ipod

Well not quite. iPods are great at what they do and will certainly sell well for several years to come. Today, however, Apple Inc. made a big step towards device convergence by introducing its iPhone (just like we predicted not too long ago).

It is widely agreed that Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple posesses a reality distortion field. His brilliantly produced keynotes (the apparent simplicity and clearness comes at a high price) make everyone think something along the lines of "Why didn't another company come up with this before? The idea is so obvious! I'm getting this gadget the day it comes out!". It doesn't matter if someone else thought of the same thing earlier (recall our coverage of Chamelephones), if there are numerous problems that have yet to be addressed or if the price is painfully high. Steve makes it seem like the new era is here and anyone can be a part of it.

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. 

For several years now, Mobile TV has been touted as "the next killer app for mobile". Cellular carriers, handset manufacturers and media companies alike argued that bringing this functionality to cell phones makes total sense. Weak consumer interest was explained as a temporary phenomenon caused by imperfect technology and high prices. "Just wait a little bit longer...", they claimed. For example, Nokia projects that "DVB-H will be accessible by an audience of approximately 300 million mobile users by 2006".

Well, we've been waiting for a while and this revolution still hasn't been televised. Let's look at where Mobile TV is at this point and what is it that stops us all from watching the latest episode of "Lost" while riding the bus home.