If this report from C|Net is to be believed, it seems that music phones are now starting to take over from low end MP3 players, just has they have watches, cameras and PDAs. In the US, 30% of users who responded to a survey claimed that their phone was their primary music device, with music phones being the big sellers over the last few months. I think it’s interesting that the companies that were touting integrated radio in their phones seem to have really missed the mark (poor, silly Telus).
It used to be that the camera was the “function du jour”, but now it seems that music has taken over, TV/Movies are likely next as it seems that you can’t turn around without an ad for some movie being available on your phone (at least with Bell here in Canada).
I still think the dedicated device will still be important in some niches – dSLRs will certainly not be replaced by a phone any time soon – with the quality of the senor, size of files and the range of focal lengths, it’s not likely that we are going to see that in phones soon. But at the same time, P&S cameras are certainly going to get threatened as the smaller lens and the rate of production for phones means that they can try out new lens technologies (like the reflection based super resolution lens coming out of UCSD). Watches are going to be wonderfully retro as well.
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