ABI Research is predicting that the stand-alone MP3 player will go the way of the PDA, and end up being assimilated by the Borg of our generation, namely the cell phone. As evidence they cite the growing number of high-capacity phones with built-in music players. ABI suggests that the Samsung SGH-i310 is a good example of a converged device that not only operates as a phone, but also has PDA functionality, a 2 Megapixel camera with flash, an MP3 player and an 8GB capacity hdd that can hold up to 2,000 songs.
Device convergence is old news, but it’s always interesting to speculate how much and how well music, video, games, camera, GPS, PDA, email, web browsing, spreadsheets, documents, powerpoints and telephone functionality can co-exist in such a small form factor.
Hard Drives in Cellular Handsets Could Spell the Beginning of the End for Portable MP3 Players – ABI Research press release, May 4, 2006
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MP3 players had a nice run, though. I’ll always remember when I got my first one…good times!
I think device convergence will swallow up many more gadgets before it’s done.