Since the iPod was launched in late 2001 it has become the most popular MP3 player by a huge margin with around 25 million units sold to date and has helped drag the hard drive music players into the mainstream.
For the last few years rumours have been circulating about the possibility of Apple creating a mobile phone version of the iPod but there has been no clear signs of a true iPod phone being created. Several patents have been cited on the web as being the plans for a future phone/iPod hybrid but so far these have been quite vague and nothing concrete has resulted.
Motorola launched a phone in 2005 with the popular iTunes music software installed but this wasn’t a huge success.
As hard drives become smaller and flash memory increases in capacity, mobile phones have become more and more like MP3 players and digital cameras. Its common for phones to have over 1 Gb of memory and they are quickly becoming more functional than basic MP3 players.
Every day that Apple delays launching the iPod phone allows manufacturers like Sony Ericsson and Nokia to improve their already feature packed devices to try and take market share away from the iPod. Although its hard to see the popularity of the iPod being affected by these phones it makes it much harder for Apple to enter the mobile marketplace. If Apple had launched a 2Gb MP3 player phone two years or even one year ago it would have been so far ahead of its competition that it would have been a clear winner.
Will this delay really affect Apple? Its hard to say for sure, they were beaten to the MP3 player market by Creative back in 2000/2001 and won the race simply because the product was right for the marketplace. If Apple can come up with a true iPod/ mobile phone hybrid without losing any of the functionality of either device then we can expect it to outsell almost every other highe end mobile phone combined.
The major issues that Apple have is that people have become quite used to having an iPod to listen to music and a mobile phone to make calls. Although having one device to do everything would be good in theory, in practice it often means compromising on the features and usability. The iPod’s success is mainly due to the simplicity and ease of use that the jog wheel provides – unfortunately this is also the main factor that is stopping it from being easily converted into a mobile phone. Can you imaging sending a text using a jog wheel or selecting your MP3 tracks using a tiny keypad?
If Apple are to create a truly ‘killer’ product they will need to find some way to either improve on or retain the classic scroll wheel that has made the iPod so popular. Otherwise they may just end up creating another MP3 player phone running iTunes software.
