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Sony Ericsson's Walkman W900 has not yet been launched in the U.S. |
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W900 will be available overseas in January (no U.S. launch date has been announced yet), and could make the ROKR seem outdated in a hurry.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.
The extent to which the W900 is a music device as much as it is a phone is underlined by the fact that it's the first phone to have a portable sound system as an accessory.
Most existing MP3 phones are "tethered," meaning a cable must be plugged into a PC or Mac for downloads.
But because of its 3G connection speed, the W900 has over-the-air music download capability, meaning tracks may be bought wirelessly and downloaded directly to the phone in the car, at work, at the beach--as well as from a computer. Most music phones will eventually add that capability so carriers can sell more tunes directly to consumers, bypassing middlemen like iTunes.
The W900 succeeds the already popular Sony Ericsson W800 (34MB storage, Memory Stick PRO Duo, no over-the-air music download capability), launched in July.
The W900 has a 2-megapixel camera, an FM radio, and wireless Bluetooth connectivity. It's available in either black or white. It's expected to price in the $500 range, at least initially.
Perhaps to counter the Motorola-Apple partnership on the ROKR, Nokia has gotten together with Microsoft to produce a high-end music device, the N-91, that will be introduced early next year. The N-91 will also be capable of shooting and playing television-quality video.
The potential of music phones to bite into the MP3 player market is such that Apple is believed to be secretly working on producing its own multimedia cell phone, independent of Motorola.
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