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iPod Killer

Entry 379, on 2006-08-10 at 16:03:36 (Rating 2, Computers)

According to Slashdot today, Nokia is the latest company who hope to produce an "iPod killer". I can see why they would want to do this - the iPod is a real phenomenon and produces a lot of revenue for Apple - why wouldn't other companies want a bit of that as well? Of course, Microsoft have also announced an alternative device, so the MP3/media player market seems to be really starting to move.

About 6 months ago I bought one of Sony's top cell phones. It also has a media playing facility and I have a 1G memory stick flash card in it for storage. My idea was to use the phone as my MP3 player instead of my 3G iPod so that I would have one less device to carry around. The problem was that it just didn't work as well as I had hoped. Maybe if I hadn't been using the iPod for so long I would have been less fussy. Anyway, the result is I still carry the phone and the iPod.

My point is that no one else seems to be able to create a device which is as pleasant to use as an iPod. User interface and elegant design have always been Apple's strengths, of course, and these are even more important in portable digital devices than in computers, so it seems unlikely that companies like Microsoft or Nokia will ever produce a real iPod killer.

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