Will Nokia Finnish The i-Pod?
Nokia sells a lot of phones. They sell ten times as many phones as Apple sells iPods. Hot Hardware editor Marco Chiappetta recently examined the evidence that Apple is trying to get a handle on the technology necessary to produce, finally, their own iPhone. They better hurry. Nokia seems to have already produced their own "noPlayer":
The bottom line? The N91 is a good music player and a superb phone. That said, I wouldn't buy one for the outlandish current price of $599 when you can get an iPod and a phone separately for less money. However, keep in mind that today's music phones are for the early adopter crowd. Mobile-service providers are notorious for taking months to approve new phones for their networks, but once the N91 or a similar Nokia model is cleared, the Nseries won't be for early adopters anymore - it will be a legitimate competitor to the iPod. Since the service providers subsidize phone prices to win customers, the 8 GB N91 probably will cost around $200-$250, about the same as the 8-gigabyte iPod nano.
It's easier for a phone maker to design their phones to play music than for music player companies to make their players dial 911. With that kind of head start, Nokia might make Apple, and anybody else in the music player business, clutch their chest and call an ambulance --on their cellphone.
