A majority of young Scandinavians believe that the next generation cell phones that double as portable MP3-players are soon going to make iPods a thing of the past. It is one of the interesting findings in a survey of 3000 young people from Sweden, Norway and Denmark between the ages of 15 to 35. The study was commissioned by the cable network MTV and Finnish telecom giant Nokia and conducted by the Swedish consumer research company Cint.  

What is currently keeping people from trading in their iPods for music cell phones, according to the study, is the limited number of songs you can put on your phone as well as compatibility problems with other electronic devices in the home. The finding that convergence is the future is hardly surprising and the study reinforces Nokia’s case for proving that the cell phone will be the single uniform platform for portable music consumption.

However, it is interesting to note that the survey did NOT ask any questions about young Scandinavian’s attitude towards new kind of devices, like WiFi-equipped MP3-players.

Such devices already exist and one is called the MusicGremlin, the first such device to come with its own online music subscription service, MusicGremlin Direct. For a monthly fee of $14.99, MusicGremlin users can keep the 8-GB device filled with nearly 2,000 songs. You also have the ability to share songs legally with other people who subscribe to MusicGremlin Direct through a wireless process the company calls “beaming”.

However, the case for having just one device that can do “everything” is still strong. It is a simple matter of convenience. The question is - what about battery time? It remains to be seen if a company like Nokia will be able to create a cell phone that actually will be able to do everything and not die after a few hours of intense media usage. In the meantime, the majority of consumers will likely not toss away their MP3-players. 

Related Links:

http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1054096

http://www.musicgremlin.com/

http://www.musicgremlin.com/GetNewMusic/Default.aspx

http://www.apple.com/itunes/