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Music fans salivating over MP3 the Motorola ROKR with iTunes may want to take a look at the rapidly evolving Sony Ericsson Walkman phones. Date published: 10/22/2005
By MICHAEL ZITZ With apologies to the late Jim Croce, you don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, and you don't mess around with the iPod. But now it appears that the biggest threat to Apple's iconic and seemingly invulnerable iPod music player might not come from other MP3 players, but from mobile phones that play MP3s. The convergence trend combining cell phones with PDAs, cameras and music players not only saves pocket space--it also saves money on buying multiple devices. And even reasonably inexpensive phones like Verizon Wireless' Motorola E815 and the Verizon Wireless CDM 8940, which can be had for $99.99 with an online discount and two-year service plan, now have MP3 capability and can download 100 songs. Verizon Wireless' colorful Samsung SCH-a950 multimedia phone has V-Cast capability, 100-song storage and built-in stereo speaker sound, and is the carrier's hottest MP3 phone in terms of youth appeal. It goes for a middling price of $149.99 with a two-year deal and after a $100 mail-in rebate. Apple has tacitly acknowledged the potential of MP3 phones by teaming up with Motorola to produce the Motorola ROKR with iTunes released last month and being sold exclusively by Cingular Wireless for $249.99 with a two-year contract. The ROKR can download 100 songs. Its biggest selling point: the familiarity and ease of use of its Apple iTunes software. It has a color display for album art and a tiny pair of built-in stereo speakers with a big sound. None of the iPods have built-in speakers yet. The ROKR's a hit for Cingular, but those willing to spend more money may want to wait until 2006. Sony Ericsson's jaw-dropping, third-generation Walkman W900 will be available overseas in January (no U.S. launch date has been announced yet), and could make the ROKR seem outdated in a hurry. The W900 has a substantial 470MB of user-available memory for storing music (up to 240 songs) and other files. And its capacity can be boosted to 2GB by adding a Sony Memory Stick PRO Duo card that allows storage of up to 1,000 songs.
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