TUAW Poll: Do you use your phone as an MP3 player?

Last night I posted about a kinda kooky article predicting the iPod's future doom at the merciless hands of MP3-playin' cell phones. Well, that got me to thinking: how many people actually use their phones as MP3 players? To come to a wholly scientific and 100% accurate conclusion, I'm posting this poll, and I ask — nay, demand — that all answer accordingly. And see more thoughts (and reader comments of note) on the topic after the jump.

The question of whether the iPod's dominance will be eradicated by the budding popularity of music-on-the-phone is after all a very valid issue. Since many readers skip right over most posts' comments, I've included some of the most notable from last night's discussion, which include some great insight.

"I also have an MP3 playing phone, but would never use it for that purpose. Storage is too limited, the MP3 functions are poorly implemented, and transferring songs to it is a pain" — tim

Very true, tim. I've fiddled with a few MP3 phones (a SLVR, one or two Windows Mobile devices, etc.), and they all share a common theme: working them is a royal pain. Everything, from copying music to listening to that music is tedious and full of unnecessary hassle. Even the SLVR, which communicates directly with iTunes, can be frustrating to set up if you don't get it exactly right the first time (and the iTunes phone interface itself is dog slow). Not to mention the storage problem...

"It all depends on what you decide to compare the iPod to (and why).

If you decide to sum up all MP3 playing devices, you should add:
COMPUTERS!!! (notebooks, portables and even desktops)
Cell phones
Car MP3 players
PDAs
Gaming devices that happen to play music, too
etc...

The comparison gets even harder as new iPods emerge. What will you compare a video iPod to? a portable DVD? a PDA?" — Ken

That's true — the article says Apple fails to include all portable MP3 players. A laptop is a portable MP3 player, is it not?

"Phones have Camera's too but I don't see people throwing away there £300 cannons to use there VGA quality camera pics." — WinMacLin

Hmph. Why didn't I think of that?

"Can TUAW and everybody else please put a dead stop to giving Thurrott more attention? Thurrott this. Thurrott that. He says whatever to get attention, over and over again. I really don't understand it any more why this guy even gets an ounce of spotlight ... and most people are absolutely sick of him and the resulting debates / forum threads / blog entries etc. like these." — icerabbit

Paul Thurrott is a respected industry pundit. People read and believe what he says. And to dispute something he writes is not hate mongering or unnecessary promotion — it's encouraging debate on viable topics. While I don't always agree with him, I respect him and his insight — and some things are certainly worth debating.

"I have to say that since I got my Samsung A900, I've stopped carrying my iPod on a daily basis. I started listening to podcasts on my commute and found that my phone handles this task quite well. I have an AppleScript that converts the podcasts to AAC and then I move them over to the phone via bluetooth. I have to carry the phone anyway and it's much smaller than my 3G iPod – about the same size as a Nano." — Kilgore

I should give that phone a try. I think if the phone manufacturers can make the MP3 functionality simple and, you know, functional, they may have a chance at dethroning King 'Pod.

"Thurott doesn't go far enough – what about people who spontaneously burst into song? They are in effect a human Mp3 player – so, the ipod share goes lower – especially if you count insane people. As the Earth rotates, millions of people actually turn off their ipod to go to sleep – that's a market share loss every night! Potentially millions of those people could have a horrible nightmare and want to buy a WMA 128k flash player the next morning! Again, more market share losses." – jbelkin

Have you ever considered a job in market share analysis?

"It all about the software. iTunes + iPod = simple." – AC

Bingo!

"About the 14% market share. I assume you are willing to accept that musicphones are a fair rival to iPods, as Apple's own CFO Peter Oppenheimer just two days ago said so, and he felt the SonyEricsson Walkman phone is getting rather close to iPods – but of course not as good. Also Oppenheimer admitted Apple is planning an iPod phone." — Tomi Ahonen

Whoa there, buddy. They didn't admit anything. They said they weren't 'sitting around doing nothing,' which could mean anything from product research to testing to brainstorming. Apple brainstorms and builds a lot of products it later trashes.

I agree, an Apple phone is almost inevitable: the market trend is clear, undoubtedly. Cell phone MP3 players are on the rise. It's obvious.

The issue here, though, is the horrible interpretation of market share data in that article. Apple's numbers are accurate, according to their parameters. If you want to include "all portable MP3 players," you would have to include laptops, PSPs, MP3-playing Walkman CD players, PDAs, etc. Apple's numbers are specifically focused on devices designed specifically to play music — the iPod et al. And in that market, they're still King.