The Finnish manufacturer said in an interview with Reuters that it was selling "huge amounts" of MP3 phones and predicted it will sell around 80 million of the devices this year, up from 46.5 million in 2005.
The figures will make interesting reading for Apple which sold 8.7 million of its iPods in Q3, lagging well behind the total figure for MP3 phones. Although Apple is still by far the most popular dedicated player choice, MP3 phones are, according to Nokia, catching up. Tommi Mustonen, director at Nokia's multimedia unit told Reuters that "the technology is completely ready, and the change in consumers' habits has started".
Paul Jackson, principal analyst at Forrester Research thinks Mustonen's comments are "aggressive... but definitely not hot air". He explained: "Yes it is true that Nokia may well have more music players than Apple at some point but it's the classic single function versus multi-function device. Nokia may have more music players out there but it probably has more games players out there than Sony or Nintendo because all its phones have Snake built-in."
Nokia is expected to launch its own online music store in 2007 and if the predictions are true Nokia will get a significant cut of the music downloads market which analyst Forrester predicts will grow an average 74 per cent every year.
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The figures will make interesting reading for Apple which sold 8.7 million of its iPods in Q3, lagging well behind the total figure for MP3 phones. Although Apple is still by far the most popular dedicated player choice, MP3 phones are, according to Nokia, catching up. Tommi Mustonen, director at Nokia's multimedia unit told Reuters that "the technology is completely ready, and the change in consumers' habits has started".
Paul Jackson, principal analyst at Forrester Research thinks Mustonen's comments are "aggressive... but definitely not hot air". He explained: "Yes it is true that Nokia may well have more music players than Apple at some point but it's the classic single function versus multi-function device. Nokia may have more music players out there but it probably has more games players out there than Sony or Nintendo because all its phones have Snake built-in."
Nokia is expected to launch its own online music store in 2007 and if the predictions are true Nokia will get a significant cut of the music downloads market which analyst Forrester predicts will grow an average 74 per cent every year.
More on telecoms.com