14 DAY TRIAL // According to a Sunday Times report, music phones like Sony Ericsson's Walkman series have started selling much more and at faster rate than the iPod did when it was first introduced. Apparently, even though Apple can now boast that it has sold its 100 millionth iPod, from 2001 to 2004 the company has only managed to sell about 4 million units. Sales started growing just as the iPod Mini was released.
As a contrast, Sony Ericsson is to announce the sales figures during this week and will be reporting sales of 17 million Walkman phones throughout last year, with a total number of 20 million since they were first introduced around a year and a half ago. What does this mean? Maybe most customers would just rather have a phone and an music player in the same device, that costs just about as much as would a standalone MP3 player.
Frankly, a device that can be used for listening to music, taking snapshots, making/receiving calls and so much more, should surpass an iPod as popularity and usefulness at any time. The report also shows that Nokia is developing an iTunes style music store. The Finish manufacturer claims that around 60 percent of their customers are now using handsets with music playback capabilities.
Mark Squires, at Nokia UK, said the big change had been digital storage capacity. "We've now got 2GB memory cards for ?15," he said. "Most people can quite happily store most of their music in a couple of gigs [of storage]. Phones have grown to be able to hold your music library, and before they couldn't." The company is planning to offer the music store in order to make it easier for customers to work with their existing library of digital music. In the end, it's a good thing that Apple has finally decided to release the iPhone, since soon enough standalone MP3 players might not sell nearly as much as they used to.