Musicphones: iPod's Fall from Grace?

The prolific Tomi Ahonen has a couple of viciously-detailed posts about the iPod's fall from prominence in comparison with music-capable mobile phones. It's pretty difficult to argue with the main thrust of his argument.

My one over-riding question though . . . exactly where are these 400m active musicphone users, outside of Japan or Korea?

I'm struggling to think of a country I've visited in the last 12 months (out of I guess 20 or so) where "identifiable" MP3 listeners in cafes/public transport were predominantly phone-based. Forget the surveys for a moment, and think about what you actually see in real life. I don't mean white earbuds, lots of non-Apple devices have them, but actually people you can see selecting tracks, changing the volume and so on. Sure, there's a fair few SonyEricssons (ERIC) being used, and a susprising number of standalone non-Apple players, but I honestly don't see that many RAZRs, Chocolates or Nokias (NOK) being used with headphones.

I know the UK is an Apple stronghold, so I realize that real-world empirical observations of music listeners on London's Tube (I'd guess 4:1 in iPod's favor) aren't globally representative. So I'd be interested if any of other readers around the world could do a "straw poll" of MP3 listeners they see on their daily commute or around college.

I also disagree with Tomi's stance on using the mobile as the centre of your "music life" rather than a PC. Apart from the easier user interface, faster/cheaper broadband and greater storage, I have to believe that most active music-lovers will treat unfettered access to iTunes, Amazon (AMZN), bands on Myspace and assorted streaming services as much more usable on a PC, irrespective of their preference for iPod or musicphone.

One other thing . . . what happens when today's downloaded music purchasers switch operators or upgrade handsets and lose some of their content because it's DRM-locked to that phone? Will we see a sudden clamour for "Content Portability" laws to go along with number portability?

AAPL 1-yr chart

Comments

[Julian Ivan...:]

Hmmm yeah.. the iPod fell from grace.. fell from grace by selling 21m over Christmas, 50% higher than last year. Some fall. What an idiot.

2007 Jan 18 09:49 AM

[Jon T:]

Tomi Ahonen has been banging on about this throughout 2006.

If you believed him, Apple should be struggling to hit sales of 50m iPods, let alone breaking 100m this quarter...

2007 Jan 18 10:35 AM

[Jerry Obrecht:]

In response to Dean Bubley's request for "other readers around the world could do a "straw poll" of MP3 listeners they see on their daily commute", I commute daily on a local train in the US, and I have never seen anyone using a cell phone for music listening...never. Also, it is rare to see a non-iPod music player.

2007 Jan 18 11:18 AM