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Market Research specialist GfK has said that in sales for June 2008, £1m of Mobile speakers have been sold – compared with just £146,000 in May 2007! In a related stat, handsets with MP3 players and/or FM Radios now account for 65% of the market, which has increased from 44% last year.
This research dovetails in nicely with the launch of Nokia’s “Comes with Music” and Vodafone’s unlimited music service, powered by Omnifone – clearly, if you are going to download the tracks you are going to play them – and that’s either going to be via headphones, or speakers (it’s just a shame that a percentage of the music-dowloading populous choose to blare tracks out of their mobile device internal speaker, typically whilst walking along!)
Obviously device feature-sets have been growing too, with more storage possible on-device (either internally, or on memory card), higher-spec “player” apps, and in some cases, specialised audio circuitry.
The research provided by GfK shows that the average price of speakers was doubling since last year, which could mean a lot of things – I’d like to think it means consumers were/are paying more for higher fidelity and power output. However, bundling speakers with handset is a very cheap and popular way for end-users to get the hardware.
As digi-downloads grow exponentially, expect to see much more of this kind of news – actually scratch that… you won’t see it, you’ll hear about it!
[Via: Mobile Today]
About The Author
Ben Robinson
Ben is a 10+ year veteran of the Mobile industry – starting his career when SMS was a still a relatively new concept for most people (!), he has now consulted on everything from bleeding-edge Mobile content, to the next-gen accessories you might view it on. As a result he has a broad and deep knowledge in numerous areas of Mobile – from network operators to device vendors, to infrastructure and middleware vendors (not to mention content delivery) – and has worked for companies in all of these areas! He is based in the UK, a hotbed of activity for mobile, and recently became a father for the second time – as oppose to in his younger years when he was happy spend time tweaking all manner of mobile devices to 'nth' degree, he now looks for services and hardware that provide the most efficient, compact, and reliable improvements to his already manic life! It’s his opinion that Mobile solutions should be there to help to make your life better – if a particular solution (be it service or device) isn’t doing this, he believes you need to ask the very important question of why you continue to use it... His focus at IntoMobile is mainly on Mobile content, services, and infrastructure, particularly as regards the UK market – and with the occasional look at devices. Additionally, using his extensive experience in the industry, he will provide commentary on the industry at large, with regular (and hopefully thought-provoking) articles.
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