Gates sees mobile phones overtaking iPods

[moneoa]

Microsoft founder Bill Gates sees mobile phones overtaking MP3s as the top choice of portable music player, and views the raging popularity of Apple's iPod player as unsustainable, he told a German newspaper. "As good as Apple may be, I don't believe the success of the iPod is sustainable in the long run," he said in an interview published in Thursday's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
"You can make parallels with computers: Apple was very strong in this field before, with its Macintosh and its graphics user interface -- like the iPod today -- and then lost its position," Gates said.
Apple has around two thirds of the global market for MP3 music players, which store thousands of songs on pocket-sized disk drives or smaller flash memory chips, and sold more than 5 million iPods in the last quarter.
But it faces increasing competition not only from the likes of Sony, whose iconic Walkman dominated the personal audio market for two decades, but also from mobile-phone companies integrating MP3 players into handsets.
Partly in response to pressure from Apple, Microsoft is now positioning itself to be a key player in the growing market for digital movies, pictures and music and grow beyond its core Windows operating system business.
It is working with partners such as Samsung to provide its Windows Mobile smartphone software to 40 handset makers.
"If you were to ask me which mobile device will take top place for listening to music, I'd bet on the mobile phone for sure," Gates told the newspaper.
In the United States, however, Microsoft smartphones have been overshadowed by Research In Motion's BlackBerry wireless e-mail device, which has sold 3 million so far.
Gates said that Microsoft's rival Windows Mobile 5.0 -- which will let e-mails pop up on a user's phone as soon as they arrive, and which is expected to be running phones on the market in the next few months -- would be cheaper.
"The BlackBerry is great but we're bringing a new approach," he said. "With BlackBerry you need to link to a separate server, and that costs extra. With us, the e-mail function will already be part of the server software."
"Therefore I'd venture the prediction that Microsoft will make wireless e-mail ubiquitous."
He admitted, however, that Microsoft had made mistakes in the past.

[Spurge]

ahhh he's just pissed he didn't think of it.

[.:sp00ky:.]

next ipod will come with built in phone is my bet.

[Signa]

i think he is right, phone companies are always practially *giving* away phones these days. who wouldnt want a free MP3 player with the new cell phone they were purchasing.

[tomars]

I hate technology. I dont want to shell out £200 for the latest mobile phone only to see them giving it away for free the next month. If I buy a video phone today, in six months there will be one that thats half the size/dvd quality/2mb connection/500gb storage/dual athlon64 processors/(exagerration) but yeah..

But if its a 512mb mp3 player on my phone, I'd rather just buy a cheaper phone and have my 30gb player in the other pocket :D

[ferrarimodena360]

1 thing is for sure

portable music is here to stay, people now want to be able to carry their whole collection with them, the next big thing will be stamp sized multi giga players

[Auggie2k]

next ipod will come with built in phone is my bet.

That would be sweet but as usual there would be some sort of compatibility problems and it will take ages for it to be universal! Hope they do make something like that!

[tomars]

If apple made an ipod/mobile phone, you could pretty much assure that it would be the most poluar phone on the market and everyone would have one, which would suck. Who wants to have the same stuff as everyone else? Thats just boring.

[tsafa1]

I have to agree with Gates. I stoped wearing watch because my cell phone has the time right on it. Mp3 players/cell phone, I saw that comming a long time ago.