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Bill Gates: iPod success won’t last
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates sees consumers moving to mobile phones for listening to music on the go, and expects the iPod’s popularity to wane.
“As good as Apple may be, I don’t believe the success of the iPod is sustainable in the long run,” he said in an interview published Thursday in German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “You can make parallels with computers: Apple was very strong in this field before, with its Macintosh and its graphics user interface—like the iPod today—and then lost its position.”
“If you were to ask me which mobile device will take top place for listening to music, I’d bet on the mobile phone for sure,” Gates said.
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21
What’s wrong with this sentence “Apple was very strong in this field before, with its Macintosh and its graphics user interface—like the iPod today—and then lost its position.â€?
Im a PC user (and hate to say a windows user as well) but Macs kick ### over Windows anyday!
Posted by pebak on June 13, 2005 at 3:28 AM (PDT)
22
Gates is right. What I’m hoping is that most (l)users won’t want Windows [CE|Mobile] running on their cellphone…
“Sure thing honey, I’ll pick up some mil—Your phone has encountered an error. Please clearly speak the nature of the error, your social security number, your mother’s maiden name, and your bank account routing number into the phone, then restart and try your call again.”
It is very true that current cellphone mp3 players are lacking. I paid nearly $1000 for a Sprint Treo 650 and a pile of high capacity SD cards. The cost literally made me want to cry. However I have way way more music on my PC than can fit on any iPod, and am often away from the PC for extended periods of time. Carrying a pocket full of SD cards is easier than carrying a pocket full of iPods (or a laptop for that matter). That is, if you don’t mind spending huge amounts of money on SD cards.
However, the audio quality on the iPod is somewhat better and the iPod<->human interface is just dead sexy. Add that to the fact that the Treo doesn’t have a regular (3.5mm or w/e) stereo headphone jack, so that it either requires special headphones or an adaptor, and I almost regretted the decision not to get an iPod.
Then I discovered that using a Treo one can listen to shoutcast pretty much anywhere there is service. $15/month (sprint’s unlimited data plan). Recently I listened to shoutcast for almost an entire 6 hour drive while only rebuffering maybe 2-4 times an hour. XM, eat your heart out. If only palmOne/teh cellphone companies could see the marketing opportunity in streaming (commercial-free) content (video over EVDO anyone?) to phones.
[Begin counterculture rant]
But no, I’m sure all the major smartphone players will continue to pay their executive marketing and r&d;folks massive amounts of money to sell people camera phones with more megapixels and costlier hip hop ringtones.
[End rant]
Posted by mike on July 5, 2005 at 12:28 PM (PDT)
23
I have six things to say, first Ipod rocks. I have a 60GB photo and love it.
Second EVDO has a bandwidth of over 2400kbps in a lab (real world is over 640 kbps)- faster than roadrunner- which drops down to 1xRTT which is roughly 60-80 kbps anywhere a cellphone can be used. Second people pay for both XM,Sirius, and Shoutcast (Sprint) (which is like listening to .wma). Third Samsung makes a 5MP cameraphone (South Korea) Fourth Motorola has just made an Ipod phone already, so you know the quality will be there. Fifth there are already 1GB SD cards. Six, technology is just going to continue to get cheaper. For these reasons I believe the dedicated player (as well as XM and Sirius) will be far behind for marketshare in the next 5 years.
Posted by Paul on July 10, 2005 at 7:22 PM (PDT)
24
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