14 DAY TRIAL // When asked directly whether Nokia is predicting the death of standalone Mp3 player, Tommi Mustonen from Nokia gave a pretty simple and very to the point answer. "I don't see any reason for standalone MP3 players to exist in the long-term. There's no reason for standalone non-connected MP3 players. You have a worse experience".
Mustonen also talked about Nokia's N-Series multimedia computers, and the impact they are having on the public. According to Mustonen, Nokia has been selling a lot of their Mp3 player mobile phones, more than 100 million in 2005 and 2006 to be more precise, and people are said to be using them heavily for listening to music.
Nokia's new Music Recommender's service was also mentioned. The service, with approximately 40 music shops around the world, offers tips and classifications so that the user can find exactly the type of music he likes through searching by certain criteria.
"It's a different approach to most recommendation engines out there," said Mustonen. "We wanted a human recommendation engine. Say I like reggae. I will subscribe to recommendations from someone in Jamaica who's lived his whole life around reggae and knows everything about it. And if I like it, I can buy it."
Although Nokia has a point by presuming that most users will probably be more keen on having a single device that can do it all in the future, and a stand-alone MP3 player won't have much to offer, what's to say that Apple's rumored iPhone will not be the device that will conquer the market?
"There is a possibility that different players will come into the market," said Tommi Mustonen "But if MP3 manufacturers are going to implement a phone feature, bringing in connectivity and other mobile features, they are basically doing multimedia computers and directly competing with us. And that's competition we're happy to take, and we plan to win that game."