Communities dominate brands recently posted about the drastic fall in the sale of iPods, and also made a very strong argument that the iPod’s era of dominance is done. The comments are brutal and Tomi Ahonen took some serious flak for that post.

I came across this post via Vinu’s blog, and like him thought about the Indian connection first, because that’s what we do. I think all the people who dismiss the mobile phone as a jukebox/music device miss some very important points…

The power of default

“The quality of audio on the phones suck. iPods are so much better”, is a common argument. But, the vast majority of people don’t give a damn about the quality of audio. If a default player is available on their phone they’ll happily use it. Most people will not buy a separate device in search of better quality, and not always because they don’t want it. It’s because they just aren’t aware of the alternatives and the pain isn’t big enough to motivate a search for something better. We’ve seen that time and again in the past. It’s the reason why many of Microsoft’s products are as popular as they are, or the reason why Google is paying companies like Dell hundreds of millions of dollars to control the default home page on new machines. It is exactly why Google raised fears of anti-competitive behaviour when it was announced that Microsoft may make MSN search the default in IE 7, even though it would be easy to select a different search engine.

iPod? What’s that?

One of the other objections raised was that even though the phones have the ability to play music, almost nobody uses it, instead opting for jukeboxes like the iPod. So, it’s pointless to compare a mobile phone and an iPod.

In a country like India, while it may be true that not many people are using mobile phones to listen to music in the form of MP3 files, it is only because of the lack of options in getting the music onto the phone. Companies like Hutch have started selling full length songs, and once this becomes more popular, I’m sure that more people will be listening to music on phones than specialised jukeboxes. The concept of a different device to listen to music isn’t even popular in India. The digital divide has ensured that. With the exception of mobile phones, it’s not just a divide, it’s a full blown chasm. The cost of these devices hasn’t helped either. I can easily imagine a taxi driver who has no clue what an iPod is downloading and listening to the latest songs on his mobile phone. All this is without considering the usage of FM radio features of mobile phones, which is definitely more than that of iPods if I can go by what I’ve seen around me.

Also, I don’t think the argument of phones taking over the market share of iPods or similar devices is even applicable to India as there never was a huge market for the latter anyway. Like in many other cases we’ve skipped an entire generation of technology and are moving directly towards usage of mobile phones for consumption of music.

While on the topic of the invincibility of mobile phones, I thought it would be interesting to capture the different product families under threat…

1. Music players – Not really applicable to India as it was never really a player to be under threat. But, worldwide the threat is only going to increase in the future.
2. Cameras – Again, cameras on the mobile phone are not ready for prime time, but they are getting there very soon. Maybe people like my brother, who recently upgraded to his third digital camera in two years won’t find the quality offered by phone cameras good enough for a long time, but I don’t think it’ll be an issue with me. My thumb rule has always been that if the quality of the image is good at a resolution which is the same as that of my desktop monitor, then the camera that took the image is good (enough). And I expect to see phones getting there very soon.
3. Credit Cards – Already happening. Mobile payment solutions are cropping up everywhere.
4. Watches – Didn’t see that coming did you? I’ve been noticing around me that many people have stopped wearing watches, the most common reason being that with a mobile phone at hand, a watch is unnecessary. I stopped wearing a watch more a year ago, but that was mainly because I spent a lot of time in front a computer, but always having a phone around has played its part too.
5. Alarm Clocks – As Tomi mentions in his post, 72% of respondents in a poll said they use their mobile phone as an alarm clock exclusively. Not sure if this is a big enough ‘product category’ to be included here though.
6. Audio recorders/Dictaphones – I’ve used my jukebox to record a lot of audio. I guess the mobile phone can do this equally well, or more easily, with their bluetooth support.
7. Paper tickets - Not required when technology makes it easier to buy, sell and authenticate tickets.
8. Goto device for information – Not exactly a product family, but the PC, books etc. will be replaced when the search engines get their acts together on the mobile phone. Of course, this does not include research of any kind. It includes the ‘need some information and need it now’ kind of moments.

There are a bunch of other products which can fit into this list merely because they can fit into/live in a small hand held electronic device, but it doesn’t make sense to add them here. Do you know of any others that can be added here?