Soup of the Day

iPod bubble bursting

This year has been a slow year for Apple with respect of new iPod releases or revisions. Finally, after almost a year of no change, many expect a revised iPod Nano to be released in the coming weeks. However there is an emerging threat to Apple’s music player business and it is not from Microsoft.

Quietly, Sony Ericsson and Nokia have been producing ever better phones with music player capabilities. Sony Ericsson started this trend by using Sony’s ‘Walkman’ monkier to announce that some lines of their new phones were specifically designed to play music as well as text and call.

I have just received a new Sony Ericsson K800i and by a strange co-incidence my iPod 4th Generation seems to have had chronic hard disk failure rendering it useless. So what do I do? Well I purchased a pair of HBH-DS970 wireless bluetooth stereo earphones and transfered 1GB of music onto my phone. The K800i can play .wav, .mp3, .m4a and .3gp music files, which covers pretty much all my library. The only problem is that the K800i cannot play protected .m4a files brought from the iTunes Music Store - although I have found a way of getting around that issue.

For the past year I have been waiting for a video capable iPod that would let me play music, watch videos, browse the web and make calls. In recent months, the rumours surrounding a much wanted iPod Phone have been at fever pitch. However, my new phone has taken me by surprise because it does everything I want, and with wireless headphones/control so I don’t need my phone out on public display to interface with it. Sorry Apple, Sony Ericsson may have just won me over for the time being.