Cell phones with hard disks will significantly cut into sales of MP3 players, a study released Thursday by ABI Research claims.

Photo: Cell Phones' Hard Drives Could Doom MP3 Players Photo 1

Cell phones offering generous data storage, enabled by small hard drives with ever-greater capacities, may soon allow the cellular handset to rival or surpass the portable MP3 player as the mass market mobile music device of choice.

At present, portable MP3 players still lead in their memory capabilities: high-end devices can hold as much as 30 or 60 GB. But Varghese believes there is a point of diminishing returns beyond which a user doesn't care whether the device can store 2000 songs or 7500. MP3 player vendors may try to defend themselves by offering even greater disk space, but over time they may still lose market share.

Mobile operators are already setting up iTunes-like stores of their own to serve a public equipped with MP3-capable handsets. Additionally, given that most MP3 players are stocked primarily with songs from consumers' own music collections, rather than only those downloaded from an online music store, high-capacity MP3 handsets provide users with the flexibility of listening to those tracks on a device that's almost always with them.

1. Posted by sexycustard	Sun May 21, 2006 3:09 pm
Apple knows this too. That's why they're integrating iPods with cell phones... Watch for the iPhone!
2. Posted by Pogo	Mon May 22, 2006 2:53 am
eventually all the features will be integrated into the cell phone. not just mp3 players. digital cameras, video games, mp3 players, tvs, credit cards, etc.
3. Posted by PunkRock	Mon May 22, 2006 11:21 am
I don't think hard drives will doom MP3 players... music phones with built-in cameras, streaming video and wi-fi will doom MP3 players. Convergence is bound to happen. Evolve or die. Survival of the fittest.
4. Posted by Darknova	Tue May 23, 2006 7:18 am
I'm happy with my digital camera, camera phone, PDA and MP3 Player, I don't want them all in one, not only will they be stupidly priced, but they will be of lesser quality and you lose all of it if it get's stolen. It's like they are trying to make us bigger targets to thieves.
5. Posted by Cadd	Tue May 23, 2006 9:01 am
I'm wtih Darknova on this one as well. On top of being expensive for an all-in-one device, what happens if your camera function should break on your mp3 playing cell phone? you'll have to replace the whole thing. plus since technology advances so quickly it makes more sense to upgrade the stuff you want than pay for everything.
6. Posted by Darknova	Tue May 23, 2006 9:25 am
Yeah, plus Harddrives get damaged when being carried around if they are knocked hard enough...how many people drop their phones?
7. Posted by brianthebmf	Tue May 23, 2006 12:22 pm
they probably would use the auto cushion technology like laptops now have.
8. Posted by Darknova	Tue May 23, 2006 12:49 pm
My dad's laptop HDD broke and it's got that. Auto-cushion just retracts the head away from the disc when the HDD falls, but if you break the spindle you're screwed.
9. Posted by GSMDude	Thu May 25, 2006 11:10 am
Memory cards are getting pretty large nowadays. I seems like a perfect fit for mobile devices. Plus no need for moving parts which is always a plus.
10. Posted by Darknova	Thu May 25, 2006 11:15 am
You can get 8Gb flash memory cards, and I know someone has/is developed/ing a 32Gb Flash memory card, but even so, I still think it's a little stupid to have that much storage on an MP3 Player yet alone a phone.
11. Posted by stargrl357	Thu May 25, 2006 11:33 am
what about memory for digital cameras? don't they make cards up to 1 GB?
12. Posted by Darknova	Thu May 25, 2006 11:48 am
Larger, you can get an 8Gb Compact Flash card. My digital camera takes Compact flash but it only supports up to 4Gb, but oh well.

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