News has come through from PC World that confirms how big music mobile phones are nowadays. Basically, recent figures released by the Entertainment Retailers Association have shown that over the last two years, 44 million mobile phones that’ve got mp3 players built in (which, let’s face it, is most of ‘em nowadays) have been sold, compared to just 8 million CD players.
On the face of it, that’s some pretty telling numbers, right there. However, I reckon the people doing the survey haven’t factored in something. It’s getting increasingly hard to think of any mobile phones that don’t have music players built in, nowadays (except, obviously, the budget end of the market), so any sales of mobile phones will skew that figure, even if people never actually use the music player in the phone.
That doesn’t mean the statistics aren’t valid because, well, they are. Just by looking at the market, you can see that people want mobile phones that do more stuff in just one device. It’s that old buzzword ‘convergence’ again, and despite it being a word that’s completely done to death, it is true, and it is where the market’s going. Think about it, how many people do you know who habitually carry a mobile phone AND a camera AND an mp3 player everywhere they go (well, ok, my dad, but he doesn’t count), when they can carry something like the Sony Ericsson W902 (which, on a side note, also has a proper 5 megapixel, autofocus, almost-Cyber-Shot camera, neatly filling the camera bracket, too) or the iPhone 3G (combining iTunes and top-notch internet access) and not get a hunchback from carrying 400 billion gadgets..?
Actually, that’s not a bad example, you know, since the Walkman brand of mobile phones has to have done more to have got people using their phones for music than just about any other marque (well, ok, the iPhone/iTunes, too, if you want to be picky). But then, Sony have got a history of doing that, what with the original Walkman in the 70′s and 80′s. And Apple have done pretty much done the same with their iPod range, so the iPhone 3G’s right to be included there, too.
Having said all that, I don’t reckon we’ll see the end of CDs for a while, since a lot of people have said they like to have something they can actually physically hold, but the future seems to be pretty much happening as predicted, and it’s looking increasingly that mobile phones are going to be playing a massively important part in the world of music for a long time to come.
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