Can Hard Drive Phones KILL THE iPod?

A new wave of mobile phones equipped with tiny yetsecond half of 2006.Although current portable MP3
powerful hard disk drives is threatening to put an endplayers such as Apple's iPod and its competitors can
to the meteoric rise of the iPod as the public'sstore as much as 60GB of digital music, companies like
favourite portable digital music player.When you look atToshiba and Seagate are already developing
the typical consumer, there are three things that theyhandset-friendly hard drives that measure around one
may come back to their house for if they have leftinch and will soon be able to match this capacity.With
one of them behind: their wallet, keys and mobilethis level of memory, you can replicate all the audio
phone.Now the cellular industry is trying to get to thefunctions currently found in a standalone MP3 player.
point where even the wallet and the keys are part ofSo the question becomes, why do you need two
the handset. There is a clear trend by which the mobileseparate gadgets to accomplish the same goal? ."Both
phone is positioning itself as the singular device thatthe standalone MP3 player and the mobile phone are
you take with you at all times.Two years agopretty much the same form-factor - play music - the
Samsung Electronics became the first handset makermobile offers an increasing number of features, with
to incorporate a hard disk drive (HDD) inside one of itsplaying music being just one of them.This new breed
models, featuring 1.5GB of data storage. Soonof mobiles has the potential not only to rival but also
afterwards Nokia was launching its N91 phone/musicsurpass the MP3 player as the portable music device
player with an embedded 4GB HDD. Then Samsungof choice, but it wont happen overnight. There'll be a
responded again with an 8GB device (the SGH-i310),timeframe during which the cellphone will still need to
which is scheduled for a European launch during thecatch up technologically with established MP3 players.