Cellphone will beat iPod

burningwheel

Bill Gates: Cellphone will beat iPod

Microsoft chairman tells German newspaper that Apple's nifty little gizmo can't sustain itself.

May 12, 2005: 3:24 PM EDT

Quote:

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Microsoft founder Bill Gates sees mobile phones overtaking MP3s as the top choice of portable music players, 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.

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i mean seriously, who is he kidding? the iPod is unsustaninable in the long run? Didn't the Dell pudder say something bad about the iPod once too? i seem to recall i posted about it once. these people are seriously wrong in the head, it's hard to believe their companies are so successful, the must be just puppets



ps. i don't have an iPod or any portable mp3 player, i don't have aneed for one

splinemodel

It's easy to take a product today, and say that if it doesn't change at all, then it won't last in tomorrow's market. But the iPod will certainly change.



But what this probably means, knowing Bill's tendency to spill beans, is that MS is making a portable music player. It probably will mate to the xBox 360, which will make it all the funnier when both fail in the marketplace.



Given MS's failure to succeed in any major hardware market, (xBox and WebTV have lost a ton of money) I just don't see how they're going to spin it.

kneelbeforezod

Yeah, but hammer beats both Cellphone and iPod, which means that it's Bill's turn to take out the garbage.

not unlike myself

If by beat he means continue to outsell. But if he is talking about music? And he'd know right? Since he is in both the cellphone and musicplayer market so deep right?

johnsocal

I love my imac and ipod as much as anyone here but Im also willing to bet the M$ will do very well with the xbox360 since they have got alot more important/key software developers onboard from the get-go.



Im sure M$ will unveil a music subscription service for a small additional fee to LIVE and since it appears that M$ is joining forces with Samsung (one of Sony biggest rivals in electronics). Im sure Samsung will manufacture phones and mp3 player compatible with the xbox360 as well as making M$ -branded products as well. I wouldn't be surprised if Samsung is the one contracted to make the xbox360 for M$ instead of Flextronics who currently make the current xbox.





Tonight @ 9:30 on mtv is the 1/2 hour unveiling of the xbox360 so we will see what the facts are.

xool

M$'s usual FUD.



I could see today's iPod eventually running out of steam, but it will continue to evolve and so will iTunes.



When a phone can hold a long charge; be used for tunes, photos, chat, and voice; be easy to use for all of these features; and easily sync my content with my computer without paying huge wireless fees, then I'd consider replacing my iPod with it. Then again, if this uber-device isn't small, light, and cheap, nobody will buy it.



Yes, I don't want to lug tons of devices around with me (my cell phone and iPod is already pushing it), but the union has to at least be as capable as standalone devices to make it worthwhile.



Granted, the 20-device-beltclipped tech heads will jump on the thing right away, just to have the latest gadget. These types don't care if the interface is atrocious however. Too bad for them.

eric_z

The cellphone will kill the iPod just like it's killed the digital camera and the palmtop.



Personally I'm rooting for the digital camera type of death for it.



[warning, humor above]

wingnut

Yeah, I think it's silly when Billy knocks competitors. I mean seriously, by pointing out fault in another product, you are clearly acknowledging it as a threat to your business. To me, it just looks like crying in your beer, because in principle, businesses should answer the competition with a product, not with a handful of negative comments. While the iPod may not be worth much in 5 years, Apple is selling them just great TODAY. I seriously doubt that Apple won't have something better by then. They basically invented the portable mp3 player, and then convinced everyone that they needed one. For some reason Bill thinks Apple has no innovation!



Not only that, I would rather get my kid "just an MP3 player," because maybe I don't want him/her to have a phone with internet access. Kids can't run up a huge phone bill on an iPod, but they sure as hell can on a cell phone. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if half the iPod owners are high-schoolers. This means there might always be a market for "just" an MP3 player.

igrant

What let me get this straight, Bill Gates from M$ is comparing a cellphone, ie commication, to the iPod, ie entertainment and music. Its like comparing apples and oranges (no pun intended). Also if he would have thought about what he said, he should have said mp3 players, not iPods, or Bill Gates should have compared iPods to a specific model of cellphones, but not iPod, a type of mp3 player, to cellphones, which is its own genre of technology. Bill Gates is the head of a corporation that is slowly begining to lose its grip on their share of the market and is trying to dance around the issue if you were to ask me.



Also I carry my iPod on me and my jump drive on me at all times, I try to lose the cellphone as much as possible.

dave k.

Cell phones could in theory wipe out the success of the iPods. What Gates doesn't get (along with the industry analysts) is the fact that all of the millions of songs consumers have been buying will only work on an Apple branded solution. This huge. Unbelievably huge advantage. It is the same advantage why Microsoft Office dominates. It is becaue of closed file formats like .Doc or .Xls. Not because of cost.



Consumers will not buy a Microsoft device (or Microsoft partnered device) and have to buy all of there music again. Not going to happen.



Both Jobs and Gates knows this.

nofeer

I wonder how many MS employees have to hide their ipods so they won't be fired.

igrant

Quote:

Originally posted by NOFEER

I wonder how many MS employees have to hide their ipods so they won't be fired.

I wonder how many M$ employees have iPods and don't care if they are fired or not.



I just do not see cellphones takening over the iPod anytime soon. I am not saying it won't ever happen, but not for a long time. Cellphones are a hassel, you can never get a signal, the service stinks, the menus are to small and the controls are terrible and could you imagine also having to store your music on a cellphone, then listening to it and trying to switch from listening to music to answering a call. I just do not see the two technologies merging together.

anders

Quote:

Originally posted by iGrant

I wonder how many M$ employees have iPods and don't care if they are fired or not.



I just do not see cellphones takening over the iPod anytime soon. I am not saying it won't ever happen, but not for a long time. Cellphones are a hassel, you can never get a signal, the service stinks, the menus are to small and the controls are terrible and could you imagine also having to store your music on a cellphone, then listening to it and trying to switch from listening to music to answering a call. I just do not see the two technologies merging together.

It tell you more about the state of cell phones/network in US.



I have a music player and radio in my phone (K700i) and use both extensive. Its integrated very nicely indeed. Music/radio is interrupted when calls come in and is resumed when the connection is hanged up. No problems. More and more phones come with fly mode so you can disable the phone part when needed. Phone interface is no more complex than that from an iPod



The only thing that is holding me back from going pure cell phone is 1) storage capacity (but thats only until they start using 1 inch harddisks) 2) Audible books (again fairly simple, just some software) and 3) design (the K750i and W800 cater for this, for each their target goup)

sunilraman

i am absolutely in love with my sony ericsson t630. yes, once sony hopefully gets is sh1t together with the 'network walkman' side of things and successfully combines it with cell phones (as it is starting to do) i may jump ship and my next iPod mini just may be a sony w800-type thingy... reports of the iPod's death have been greatly exagerrated though. for chrissakes will some sony executive give steve jobs a new private jet or something and work together to make an iPod-cell phone...!! please...!!



ps. the sony K series of phones is just not doing it for me. w800 is cool though... i'm more looking in that line



peace out y'all

ragingloogie

something tells me.. cell phones wont be ipod by a long shot.. apple's been making new ipods and upgrading and such.. in this past year/school year, it came out w/ the 6Gb mini and the shuffle.. so its defitnatly changing which will give apple the edge

tmp

Quote:

Originally posted by Dave K.

Cell phones could in theory wipe out the success of the iPods. What Gates doesn't get (along with the industry analysts) is the fact that all of the millions of songs consumers have been buying will only work on an Apple branded solution. This huge. Unbelievably huge advantage. It is the same advantage why Microsoft Office dominates. It is becaue of closed file formats like .Doc or .Xls. Not because of cost.



Consumers will not buy a Microsoft device (or Microsoft partnered device) and have to buy all of there music again. Not going to happen.



Both Jobs and Gates knows this.

what they also don't get is the 800 lb gorilla in the corner: the cell phone carriers. If there's going to be a Verizon music phone, Verizon is going to insist upon it's users having to use "get it now" to get it to the phone- they insist upon charging you a quarter to get your pictures off the phone for g-d's sake. I don't see Sprint & Cingular giving up that revenue stream either. Unless there's a lot more mergers, it's not gonna happen anytime soon.

groverat

Oh Bill, you need to give money to charity instead of talking about pop culture trends. You're out of your element, cutie pie.



[edit]



Though I do agree that the mp3 player market will hit commodity status eventually and the "iPod" mystique will wear off.



Apple will surely see this coming and adjust accordingly.

kneelbeforezod

Quote:

Originally posted by tmp

what they also don't get is the 800 lb gorilla in the corner: the cell phone carriers. If there's going to be a Verizon music phone, Verizon is going to insist upon it's users having to use "get it now" to get it to the phone- they insist upon charging you a quarter to get your pictures off the phone for g-d's sake. I don't see Sprint & Cingular giving up that revenue stream either. Unless there's a lot more mergers, it's not gonna happen anytime soon.

I'm not so sure about that. If the device is a GSM phone it'll be a simple matter of swopping over a SIM card for Cingular or T-Mobile...anything either company did to try and prevent the phone from being used in the US would be anti-competitive.



Wireless providers are living a pipe dream if they think they're going to be content providers. Nothing any teleco has come out with so far outside of Japan has been worth paying for beyond the novelty value. They should stick to provisioning connectivity that is open to content providers who specialize in content and try getting that right instead.