Music-player enabled mobile phones heading toward more competitive positioning in the wireless handset market. Music phone shipments exceeded 300 millions units in 2006. Full track music delivered to these handsets will drive the mobile music market across all categories to more than $15 billions by 2010, so a report released by iSuppli.
Some of the most familiar series of these mobile are Sony Ericsson W (Walkman) series, Nokia N series, followed by music enabled series by Motorola, Samsung or LG.
All listed above has not mentioned the recently announced iPhone by Apple. iPhone with a beautiful 3.5-inch widescreen display, extends the Apple’s immensely popular music player, iPod, with GSM phone, www, email and other office capability. Its main advantages lay on its modern software adopted from Apple’s OSX features, all “no-buttons” interface with intensive use of touch-screen, not to reckon its sleek & sexy look.
Cingular operator was appointed as its sole seller and GSM operator in North America with many very tight conditions from Apple, such as a percentage of the monthly charges collected from iPhone users, also control over how the device was sold, particularly ruling out selling iPhone in big box stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart. While Cingular’s motive mostly to increase its market share with this exclusive iPhone deal.
A handful of different vendors are involved in producing iPhone. Foxconn, a subsidiary of AlusTech, manage & assemble the overall modules. Module providers include Largan which supply the actual camera lens, Micron provide the CMOS image sensor. Other companies involved include Intel, Sharp, Tripod Technology, Broadcom and Sunrex which each supply the memory, LCM display, circuit board, baseband chip and keypad, respectively. Catcher Technology mold and manufacture the phone’s exterior housing, so as the case with iPod.
Meanhile a report from China Times said the device has been finalized and released to manufacturing and Foxconn will begin delivering the phones to Apple at a rate of 500,000 to 600,000 pcs per month beginning this February 2007.
So here’s may be a silly question with a clear answer, will iPhone further hike the number of music-enabled mobile phones shipped this year? We can tell the potential is huge though..
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