Cellular Set to Beat IPods in Handheld Media Market

Despite its iconic status over the last two years, particularly in the United States, in a very few years the iPod may become just a historical curiosity. A recently published study by IMS Research on the Global Markets for Handheld Media Players over the next five years analyses the forces that may make its dominance only regional and temporary. Despite Apple's remarkable powers of innovation, it seems questionable whether its stand-alone audio and video players will be able to withstand the challenge of the media-enabled mobile phone.

The explosive growth of the iPod range to almost 32 million units in 2005 made the news, but of more significance in the year was the arrival in the global markets of low-cost flash-based media players from a wide base of suppliers, and numerous models of MP3-enabled cell-phones. Together they were estimated to account for more than seven times the number of hard-disk standalone media players shipped.

"60% of the 1.1 billion cellular handsets sold in 2010 are forecast to feature media players" commented Peter Cooney, Senior Market Analyst for this report. "This is nearly twenty times the shipments expected for stand-alone hard-disk players, and nearly three times the number of stand-alone flash-based players".

It is clear that carrying around a phone for ease of voice or text communication is a given for most people. For a large swathe of the market it is hard to imagine the desire to carry other appliances if their function can be successfully provided by the handset. Though stand-alone, handheld media players and cameras may survive, because of either their low cost and simplicity of operation or their superior performance, it seems inevitable that a large part of their current market will fall to the cellular phone."

Posted to the site on 5th July 2006