More on the iTunes Phone

Buyer have been wowed by the recently-announced iPod Shuffle - the flash-based MP3 player with no screen and only 512 MB of RAM. (I feel so old. I remember when 1 MB seemed like an incredible amount of space.) But he folks are Engadget are warning us that the real market mover is going to the the Motorola phone with the iTunes interface that was announced.

Think of iTunes-capable cell phones as “clones” of the iPod shuffle. Like PC clones in the early days, they will offer true differentiation, in this case, wireless connections. And they will be offered in channels where Apple has no presence today, such as the storefronts of Verizon Wireless, Cingular, and other carriers, which could expand the market. Over time, however, like PC clones in a mature market, they have the potential to cannibalize the originator’s product...Most of the discussion around cell phone cannibalization focuses on PDAs or digital cameras, but flash-based MP3 players are lower-hanging fruit. In contrast to the challenges of competing with a PDA, there’s no input bugaboo to address; a nine-button keypad is more than accommodating for music playback. And unlike competing with digital cameras, creating an MP3 player is relatively simple and cheap. There’s no need to worry about lenses, sensors, flashes, and other extras far removed from a phone’s core functionality that make a significant difference in picture quality beyond the megapixel count.

Methinks that they have an excellent point here. However, I think it may be only a matter of time until a Symbian-based cell phone is released which is branded as an Apple iPhone. Talk about low-hanging fruit. I can think of 20 people off the top of my head who would buy one, even if it meant a new contract with a new carrier, especially if it acted like an iPod and sported a MacOS X-style interface.