So says this story in WSJ, though I think it is still too early to say that…the story bases its contention on the wide availability of music phones in U.S. now, and these dual-function handsets are often low-priced, and sometimes free, with a two-year service contract.
The pick: Cingular has 18 music phone models available, including two Walkman phones from Sony Ericsson, a Smartphone called Blackjack from Samsung and three Motorola phones that play iTunes tracks. Verizon launched a new music phone this Monday called enV by LG and is marketing one of its best selling music phones called the Chocolate aggressively, via TV commercials and full-page newspaper ads. Besides their own mobile music stores, all major carriers allow their customers to download their own music collections from PCs to phones.
But again, not all consumers who own music phones use them to play songs. Sony Ericsson says that about half of consumers who bought the Walkman phones don’t store music in their phones while Motorola says that its research shows that over 50% of customers who bought their handsets optimized for music do use the phones as MP3 players. I think those numbers are way too high. Anyway, there’s that iPhone thing as well, so who knows who’s right these days.
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