Tera Talks

Tera Thomas O'Brien Talks Apple

Manage Mac Fonts

Select, compare, and activate fonts with Typeface, the affordable Mac font management tool.

Is The iPod On A Death March?

Cell phone or iPod? Will the iPod become a cell phone or die? Apple sits on top of the portable music industry, and on top of the online music industry. The iPod is king of players. The iTunes Music Store is king of online music, music videos, TV shows, and maybe movies. Is the king on a death march? Will your cell phone become the new iPod?

The answer is a resounding yes. Cell phone miniaturization is quickly gobbling up functions and features once reserved for standalone products.

PDA’s, cheap cameras, cheap music players (with expensive music). They’re all bowing to the convenience of the cell phone in your purse or pocket.

Apple’s iPod is on a death march.

Think about it. If you could have everything that your iPod nano has, but inside your cell phone, would you still carry an iPod nano?

“I might be wrong, but it seems to me the ability to easily buy a single, new episode of a TV show (and repeats), as well as single songs, albums, movies and music videos in a form that is easy to watch or listen, will change everything.”Carry it a step further. If you could have everything that your iPod with video has, including screen and storage, and get it all inside your cell phone, would you buy an iPod?

One more step. If your cell phone would synchronize to your Mac or PC as effortlessly as your iPod and iTunes does now, yet does everything the iPod does, and carries AddressBooks and iCal data, would you still buy a standalone iPod.

The answer is yes. If you don’t have a cell phone. The answer is ‘probably not’ if you could get a cell phone that does all that and more.

Make no mistake. The iPod is on a death march. That is, the iPod as we know it.

I know this. You may suspect it, others have said so, including Alan Kohler of The Age. In a very round about way, with a number of logical gaffes in between, without fully realizing his argument, Kohler hit the nail on the head.

To be fair to the reader of his rubbish, and much of it is, most tech pundits get it wrong when it comes to Apple, the Mac, the iPod, and the future of technology.

There’s the standard article about the Mac’s closed system, how Microsoft won because Apple didn’t license the Mac. Other articles warned of Microsoft’s impending entry into portable music.

Others prognosticate about how Apple will become a niche player in portable music, too. It’s just a matter of time.

Many of the arguments are plausible though wrong, most are laughable, and few recognize what’s happening in technology.

What’s happening? Change. Change is what is inevitable (besides woodwork tech pundits with another new argument and flashy headline). Not only is the iPod on a death march, so is pretty much everything else, including cell phones.

How so, Miss Tera? Cell phones get ditched every year or two, as users switch from one phone to another, one carrier to another. That’s change.

Cell phones now combine digital camera functions and PDA features. Poor quality in the former, better on the latter. That’s change.

Convenience and quality and style don’t always go hand in hand, especially in technology. PCs are cheap, convenient, but lack style, and except for a few brands and the Mac, lack quality.

A good digital camera loses on convenience, but carries a strong market on quality, perhaps style. PDAs? Take mine, please. These are relegated to a small niche, and Apple was wise to avoid competiton with Palm and PocketPC in favor of synchronization (such as it is).

The iPod wins on convenience, for now, wins on quality and style. For now. Convenience is a big plus for the iPod as it synchronizes wonderfully with Mac and PC, a critical element that cell phone manufacturers still haven’t figured out.

But Tera, don’t people go through iPods about the same as they go through cell phones? The answer is yes. iPod customers trade up, and then hand-me-down their iPods. It’s a natural evolution.

Change is also a natural evolution. The standalone iPod may continue to exist for many years but remains on a death march. The iPod will change. I’m sure of this because Apple continues to change the iPod, improve the iPod, keep the iPod competitive despite fierce competition from all corners and comers.

“All the pieces are there already. The Apple of 2006 is not the Apple of 1985, or 1992, or 1996. This Apple knows that managing change is a requirement for success today and tomorrow. Previous Apple incarnations did not, or could not manage required changes.”What happend to the PDA? It’s a niche, and that’s what many tech pundits say will happen to Apple’s iPod efforts; relegated to a footnote and a miniscule market share, just like the Mac vs. Windows.

I understand the argument. If we don’t learn from history, we’re relegated to repeating it, right? But that was then, and this is now. Apple is a much different company than 20 years ago, when Steve Jobs left.

Apple is competing successfully again against Microsoft and Windows. Apple is competing successfully against portable music player manufacturers and Microsoft.

Apple is about to compete against a different team in a different league. Survival and prosperity of the iPod is at stake. The iPod is on a death march and it is Apple making it happen.

Remember the Treo? It’s the PDA that became a cell phone. Apple will make the iPod become a cell phone. The technology is there. Miniaturization. Battery life. Hard drive size. Flash memory. Video screens. Virtual cell phone networks.

All the pieces are there already. The Apple of 2006 is not the Apple of 1985, or 1992, or 1996. This Apple knows that managing change is a requirement for success today and tomorrow. Previous Apple incarnations did not, or could not manage required changes.

This isn’t even the same Apple that kicked out the clones, that mothballed the Newton, that stomped on Copland. Will the iPod, as we know it today, die?

Yes. Long live the iPod. Hail, to the new iPod, the next iPod. Here’s to the future. The new iPod, the iPod phone, the iPad wireless, and the products that Apple must roll out this year and next year.

Why? Because this year and next year the average cell phone will do music, movies, video conferencing, and much more. Apple cannot afford not to play in another league. Apple doesn’t have the luxury of choosing the competition; the team or the league.

Otherwise, there will be more to the death march than the most recent iPod. Will the iPod in your pocket be replaced by your next cell phone? I’d rather replace my cell phone with a new iPod.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  2. The user interface on most cell phones is fairly atrocious, as is the software used to sychronize them.  If Apple were to produce an iPod that had battery life and run times comparable to a modern cell phone, then I would probably get one. 

    My main argument against the MP3-playing cell phone or the PDA-cell phone is battery life.  Cell phones shouldn’t have to be recharged every time you talk on them, or every day, and the cell phone I use now doesn’t require either… I can usually go three or four days of use without charging it.  Most of the current cell phones that do more than just phone have miserable battery life if you use their other functions.

  4. Mr. Fox, if the opponent who lost is growing marketshare, raking in billions of dollars a year, and wins awards the world over, that’s a losing that most people would be thrilled to have. Your statement does violence to the word “losing” for it implies an endpoint when no such endpoint has been reached.

    As far as the iPod becoming a cell phone, it could happen. However, one thing that Apple traditionally does is release devices that do a small set of functions well. They don’t release super-busy hacks that ooze “buttonitis”. I’m afraid I don’t see how you can create a cell phone that does pictures, movies, plays games, and etc. without violating the simplicity of design for which Apple is known.

  5. The debate has been, and always will be: multi-functional all-in-one device in your pocket that does everything kinda okay? Or separate specialist devices?

    You’re right about the cell phones. The nature of the iPod flash storage and its interface allows it to evolve into a cell. Or some gene-spliced combo of the two.

    By the same token, there will always be a need for the specialist devices that do one thing very well. People don’t want to watch a movie on their iPad, and suddenly have a call ring through. Megapixels doesn’t equal quality in the photographic world; cells will never replace cameras.

    Please note that the computer hasn’t replaced the TV. The TV is still part and parcel of our lives. And so is the book. Despite the fact that the computer can download books, and also play TV, people migrate to back to the basics.

    People also get fed up with TOO much multi-functionality. How many times have you seen people get a new TV or DVD, look at the remote control, and despair of ever learning all the buttons? Or the same with a digital camera and its layers upon layers of menus and features? The iPod may shoot itself in the foot if it becomes DAUNTING to use because it offers too much!

  6. Here’s the email I sent in to the Melbourne Age adressing many of the fallacies I found in Kohler’s article:

    Alan Kohler’s article suffers a number of errors that flaw what is otherwise a good article.  He states that “the only place you can easily buy material for your iPod, as opposed to stealing it, is the iTunes online store.”  This is patently untrue as a far greater percentage of music on the average iPod has been legally copied from the owner’s CD music collection.  The average number of songs purchased by iPod users from the iTMS is only at last count about 20-30 songs (out of 15,000 on a 60GB iPod).  Even here in Australia where “fair use” doesn’t get a fair go thanks to legislation inspired by ARIA’s block-headedness, it is a real stretch to state that this is “stealing music”. 

    There are also a number of online Music sites such as eMusic (which has a library of over 1 million songs) that sell mostly independent music in unprotected MP3 format which also of course play fine on the iPod.  Now that podcasters are licensed to include music in their podcasts, iPod users have yet another avenue to legally receive mainstream as well as independent music straight to their iPods.

    Kohler also states that the iPod story could end up like the Macintosh whose “early dominance” was obliterated by Microsoft Windows.  In point of fact, Apple has never had anything remotely close to the market dominance the iPod and the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) have been enjoying over the past 5 years. 

    The Apple II hit a maximum marketshare of 15% in 1981 while the Macintosh only ever managed a maximum of 11% in 1991. http://www.pegasus3d.com/total_share.html
    The iPod and iTMS have around 70-80% in their respective markets.  We are in a totally different ballgame this time round.  The issue now is, commercially Apple would be stupid to license their Fairplay DRM more widely until a credible threat appears to their continuing dominance. 

    The subsequent statement that it could all end for Apple once “Microsoft and/or Google come along, which will be soon” is a real boodoggle as Microsoft has been in this market for far longer than Apple with a multitude of online music stores and “Plays for Sure” MP3 players from many third parties – most now available directly from within the Windows Media Player in Windows XP – and still they have all been decimated by Apple. 

    Google for their part has been running an online video store for a while now in competition with videos sold on the iTMS and has scarcely made a dent.

    (cont’d next post…)

    -Mart

  7. (cont’d from previous post)

    The impact of music phones however is indeed less certain, although Sprint Nextel achieving sales of 1 million songs over 3 months downloaded to their users’ phones pales into insignificance against the iTMS that sells 3 million songs every day!  The rumoured iPhone from Apple could quite easily put paid to this market as well if it proves more “Apple-like” than the ill-conceived Motorola ROKR.

    Consumer electronics firms that for decades have cursed us all with the dreaded flashing “12:00” on our VCRs and other devices courtesy of abysmal human interface design are now feeling the wrath of the consumer as they choose the “insanely great” user friendliness and gorgeous design epitomised in the iPod-iTunes symbiosis.

    I wonder if the future will actually be considerably more Apple-flavoured than we think.

    -Mart

  8. Dan’s got it. The reason why music playing cell phones won’t live up to their hype is battery life. My SprintPCS phone goes for 3 days of normal use less if I use it heavily.

    The last thing I want to have to do is manage batteries for my phone. Right now I have two batteries, one is always charging and one is in the phone. What happens if I play music on my phone for 4 or 5 hours, suddenly I have to stop playing music or risk my cell phone running out of batteries.

    If I have a separate nano, I get more battery life because I’m not sharing between two device functions. And, I can listen to my nano without worrying about running out of battery life. It is a minor inconvenience if my nano stops working, it could be a big problem if my cell phone has no juice.

    I don’t want to have to manage that situation and it is completely unnecessary because it is just easier to keep the phone and music player separate.

  9. I think the iPod death will be a very long protracted one for two reasons:

    1. Multi function devices are usually crap. The camera on my last cell phone took such crappy pictures that I could barely recognize what the picture was.

    2. The carriers in the US are too greedy. They block functionality to let you transfer pics or music to/from the computer so they can charge for airtime. They charge by the picture to email pics. They charge $2 for crappy ringtones. The carriers are going to help the iPod live a long and happy life.

Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!