October 8, 2005
Cells, MP3 Players in Battle Royal
The Korea Times reports on how mobile phones and MP3 players are battling it out to be the mainstream mobile terminal in the digital convergence era.
"Up until now, mobile phones seemed to have a leg up on its major competitor, absorbing almost all functions, including the MP3 player.
However, the portable digital jukebox looks ready to hit back by soaking up the voice call feature, a move spearheaded by Apple Computer, the world's primary MP3 player vendor famous for its iPod series.
... Experts say no to the possibility that wireless call-capable MP3 players will surge past today's music player-embedded cell phones.
"It is a not a big deal for cell phones to embrace a music player but you cannot expect the same vice versa. It is a tall task for Apple to upgrade its iPod to a cell phone for various reasons," said Kevin Lee, an analyst at Woori Securities.
"Cell phone users do not have to do additional works to listen to songs with incorporated music players. But MP3 player users need to sign up for mobile carriers to make or receive calls with it,'' he said."
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