A friend recently forwarded me a couple articles on MiniDisc players because he knows I was an early adopter on that (like just about everything else!):
Analyst: "Sony's opinion of how important they were in the portable audio
market was an illusion," - <http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/201171_ipodjapan26.html>
CNet: "[Sony] missed the boat with digital audio players, insisting that device owners convert MP3s to the proprietary Sony format." <http://news.com.com/Sony+launches+music+players+with+MP3+support/2100-1041_3-5425555.html>
My personal opinion is that the whole "personal audio" space is going to bit it when cel phones get more powerful.
There are already a ton of phones out there that can play true stereo (as oppossed to some inferior mixed mono) MP3s (or WMAs in the case of MSFT smartphones). These phones sound good (enough) to most people already but they are hindered by a couple things:
- Many people don't know their phone can play full blown music
- most headphones sold in target/best buy/circuit city, etc. that are comfortable to listen to music out of don't have a built in mic, three (or four) lead conneciton, or a mini-jack (i.e. smaller than 1/8")
- the phone's UI SUCKS and is non-intuitive if they find it
- the phone typcially does not have "plugabilty" and you're stuck with an inadequate amount of storage to store more than half a dozen songs.
- the battery gets eaten in record time wihile listening to MP3/WMAs
If manufacturers of cell phones play their cards right they can crush apple and sony in one fell swoop by:
- using some storage medium that allots them a lot of plugable space (i.e. SD cards have 1GB+ sizes out there and are rather speedy)
- incorporate in the hardware MP3/WMA codecs to draw less current than a microprocessor running it in software
- work with headphone companies to make some non-suckful headsets and get them in retail channels (think SHURE style in ears with tiny noise cancling mic)
- MAKE IT EASY TO USE... This is where apple kills everyone - the hwole sync/charge/aquire more music/play my music is so easy
- bluetooth to stream audio (maybe need another wireless technology - I forgot what bluetooth can sustain for bandwidth off the top of my head, only like 772kb/s?... but should be adequate for most people sampling at 96kb/s to 256kb/s) to higher quality playback device when avilable (i.e. home stereo, car stereo, etc.) and work with those manufacturers (including sony!) to create a new market and spark demand for it.
- MAKE SURE TO WORK WITH AVIATION INDUSTRY to introduce something that would allow them to know the phone has it's radio diabled.
I would argue that the total audio market out there that is really wanting to carry a device in addition to carrying a cell pohone is close to nil... It is relegated to those people with out cell phones which is increasingly few people in the target audience of a digital audio playing device.
I thought I would have a winner with Smartphone 2003 on the Samsung i600 but I personally found it hard to use, didn't figure out how to create playlists, it was a pain to control volume, select a song or group of songs to play, it was really really really (painfully) slow while interacting with it, it was never loud enough on playback and it seeemed to drain the phone's battery in an instant. Maybe these were all addressable but lack of bluetooth and a couple crashes of the phone when people called me and I opened the phone without the ability to talk with them convinced me to replace the phone with a less-smartphone. It was a good avdventure and I lok forward to trying another smartphone in another generation or two but for now I'd like a phone that doesn't lock on me randomly or that I don't need to know the "hard reset" code for.
I think of the target market for iPods as 10-14 year olds with no cell phone or people who are buying them to keep up with the joneses. I'm sure this is a simplistic view - but when I look at it a lot of these people who bought the iPods have a stereo at home, in the car, and at the office (computer/pc) already... And carry a cell phone. If they had the easy sync/playback experience of the iPod and they didn't have to carry another device, wouldn't they be happier? I know I would.
Disclaimer: I do not own an iPod or any current generation audio device - instead I use an old MiniDisc recorder I bought in 1998... I still get 24 hours of playback on two AA plus the internal rechargable battery. I record directly from my home PC w/1.2Tb of storage with my 1000+ CDs (all legal, all owned by me.. see below picture) sampled using Windows Media 9 Lossless codec for bit-for-bit accuracy using the S/PDIF fiber out to minidisc optical in. I haven't been able to justify an iPod/other digital media player to myself... The closest I've come is almost buying a Rio Carbon and I just couldn't believe I'd use it since I hate to have to carry more crap.
The media closet at home.
Yes, all of these (and many
more) are available through my
Windows Media Center 2005
or Windows Media Extender for Xbox.
But I'm still not an iPod person.
Anyway - that's my rant for the day. No more carrying yet another piece of annoying "battery consuming/charger required" crap with me... Every time I travel I already take a camera bag, a computer bag (laptop to use to back up/edit photos at night and to play movies/shows for my son on the plane/at the hotel), and a cell phone. I don’t want to carry any more and would find it nice, but not a necessity, to have an audio player on flights and such... worst case I can throw some tunes on my laptop if I'd like to.
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