Re: Memory Cards Could Pose Threat to Apple iPod

Cell Phone Memory Cards Could Pose Threat to Apple iPod made me chuckle.

How many times have we heard:

1) Palm is in severe trouble
2) Apple is in severe trouble
3) The iPod is in severe trouble

? Well if I had a nickel....

With more and more customers wanting access to digital storage, the market for removable cell phone memory cards has exploded in recent years, growing by 160% last year alone.

Ok, but Apple’s 2005 fiscal 4th quarter posted a “68 percent year-over-year revenue growth and 384 percent net profit growth” and “10th consecutive quarter of record iPod sales”

Ok but that’s the past, what about the future? Keep reading:

The amount of storage demanded is also increasing, as memory capacity becomes a more important feature for mobile devices. In 2005, the average mobile memory card had a capacity of 112MB, but this number is set to grow to 1.6GB by 2010.

Do those numbers sound right to you? 1.6GB? In 2010? That’s going to threaten the iPod? The lowest rung of the Nano has that already. People are going to want more space for music plus email plus movies. 1.6GB in 2010 is going to seem worse than 32mb in 2006. You want a convergence device

Many analysts now believe that this trend, along with the constantly improving media functionality of cell phones, will pose a big threat to the Apple iPod’s dominance of the digital music market.

This is just one more reason why Apple should try and corner the fast-growing converged communication and entertainment market with an iPod cell phone or other converged device, as competition is bound to increase in the months and years to come.

Will Apple do this? Perhaps. But remember everyone keeps saying that they ought to come out with a Mac Tablet and they’ve wanted the Newton back for years.

Personally I can’t imagine how it would work. How would you combine the ease of use of the iPod with a PDA with a phone? I guess that I am really attached to the full keyboard of the Treo. After all, we’re not just talking about an iPod and a PDA.

But if you had a phone, you’d need at least a keypad. If we’re talking convergence, I’d think you’d want to be able to send/receive email, which I just can’t imagine doing without a real full keyboard. Then there’s the definitive iPod scroll wheel. Will Apple ever release an iPod, even an iPod phone, without it? And if they do, how big will the screen be? I mean, you will be able to surf the web on this device, right?

Am I saying that Apple absolutely won’t make an iPod phone? Nope. But if I was Palm or Motorola or Nokia or any of the other cell phone/PDA makers, I’d hope they won’t. It’s going to take a lot of engineering magic or (and I think this is much more likely) a complete paradigm shift.

I do not think that the threat will come from smartphones with 1.6 GB of storage space in 2010. My Treo 650 is about the same size as my 60GB iPod with Video. I’ve added 1 GB SD card to the Treo for my email, backups, audio books, etc. I occasionally throw on a short video to watch. But managing content on my Treo is nowhere near as easy as managing content on my iPod.

What advantage does the Treo have? Bluetooth for easy syncing and GSM/CDMA for wireless access. That’s what I talked about in The Convenience of Convergence.