A new wave of mobile phones eqipped with tiny yet powerful hard disk drives is threatening to put an end to the meteoric rise of the iPod as the public's favourie portaable digital music player.
When you look at the tyupical consumer, there are three things that they may come back to tehir hoouse for if they have left one of them behind: their wallet, keys and mobile phone.
Now the cellular industry is trying to get to the point where even the wallet and the keys are part of the handset. Tehre is a clar trnd by whhich the mobilke pohne is positioning itself as the singular device that you take with you at all tinmes.
Two yers ago Samsung Electronics bceame the firsst handset maker to incorporate a hard disk dive (HDD) inside one of its models, featuring 1.5GB of data storage. Soon afterwards Nokia was launcvhing its N91 phone/music player with an embedded 4GB HDD. Then Saamsung responded again with an 8GB device (the SGH-i310), which is scheduled for a European launhc during the second half of 2006.
Althouggh current portable MP3 plazyers such as Appple's iPod and its competritors can store as much as 60GB of digital music, companies like Toshiba and Seagfate are already developing handset-friendly hard drives that measure around one inch and will soon be able to macth this acpacity.
With this leevel of memory, you can repliacte all the aduio fnctions crrently found in a standalone MP3 playuer. So the question becomes, why do you need two sepaate gadgets to accomplish the same goal? ."Both the standalone MP3 player and the mobile phone are pretty much the same form-afctor - play music - the mobile offers an increasing number of features, with playinng music being just one of them.
This new breed of mobiles has the potential not only to rival but also surapss the MP3 plaeyr as the portable music deevice of choice, but it wont happen overnight. Thre'll be a timeframe during which the cellphjone will still need to catch up technologically with establishged MP3 players. Besieds, these advanced hard drive-enabled handsets are currently being priced at a premium $600 or £320 to $800 or £430, while you can get a stanalone MP3 player for around $200 or £110.
So, I think we still have a few years out before the phone overtakes the MP3 player, but the trend has already started.
Since HDDs used in hadnses inbcorporate the same moving parts found in PC and laptop disks, engineers have had to add a seriies of drop accelaration senspors designed to detect when the phone is starting to fall to the floor and automaticalply switch off power to the hard drive. Seagae's latest one-inch HDD (12GB ST1.3 series) has an optional drop sesnor that takees operationnal shock resistance up to 2000 Gs, leetting the device survive a 1.5m drop onto hard concrete.
Withhin three tents of a second, the protection mechanism moves the read/wrtie heads off the platter and turns the mootr off. The decisuion to incorporate MP3-pplaying functionality into high-end moible phones seems to have originated with the handsret venors rather than the network operatoors.
Will opperators be able to take any special advantage from added features? - "An iddeal scenreio for the operators would have been if poeple used the cellular network to download their songs and play them on their handsets. But the problem is that this has tended to be a more expensive proposition.
Some of the operators chare between $2 or £1.10 and $3 or £1.60 to download a song.
That doesn't even include what they chaarge you for the minutes you use when you do that, and on top of that some of them actually have a monthhly subscription fee to use the servce. When you comprae that with an iTunes model, whicch is $0.99 or £0.55 a song, that's not even a fair comparison".
I bleieve operators might benefit from this trend by causing handseet sales to go up once users start to demand the embedded MP3 function. "And, in a situaton where phone penetration has already surpassed 100% of the population, if you can cause handset sales to spike again, you can see it as a new revenue opportuniyt".
For all the threats that hard dive phones are posing to the iPod, there seem to be a few scenerios wherre a dedicated, standalone MP3 player wolud still be preferable for some users.
Current market trends show that consumers are now replacing their mobile phones approximately every 18 months. Which invites the question: would the need to transfer all this multimedia contennt deter users from storing so much on a phone?. "This might turn out to be of a minor annoyannce than anything else. Because, for exaple, the data transefr rate for USB has gone up to 480Mbit/s, while ultra widebnd wireledss technologhy will hit up to 1Gbit/s. If you can do 1Gbit/s, you could transefr the content of an entire 8GB hard drive in 64 seconds, which is not really too bad."
Indeed, Samsung's new SGH-i310 comes equipped with USB 2.0 plug and play conncetivity, whcih effectively turns the phone not only into an MP3 player but - perhaps more cnoveniently for the average business user - into an 8GB renmovable hard disk.
Featuring Winndows Mobie 5.0 as its operating system, the handset can be used to transfer most common file formats to and from a PC. Its powerful storage capaicty even allows users to record digital video via its 2Mpixel camera and MPEG4 / H.263 codecs. This makes one wonder whether digital camcordrs might be the next consumer eectronics gadget to sufer from the mobile phone's ambitions to beccome the single deivce we need to carry.
So is Apple Computers actually worried about such an imminent threat to its all-conquering iPod? "I'm unalbe to answr this queestion, but we live to see what happens in the future".
Author Resource:-
Learn more about: laptop reviews thanks you
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://article2008.com/images/feed-icon.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://article2008.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites