By Jo Best, 27 November 2006 16:40
NEWS
The idea of fitting your entire music collection into a single device the size of a packet of cigarettes might have seemed outlandish 15 years ago. But that was before the iPod. Now, one Google exec is predicting the iPod will lead a further media transformation of similar magnitude in the coming decade.
Speaking at the FT World Communications Conference, Nikesh Arora, Google's VP of European operations, told delegates that, in the coming years, the plummeting price of storage and its increasing volume-to-size ratio will give iPods almost unlimited potential to hold music and video.
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Arora said, by 2012, iPods could launch at similar prices to those on sale now and yet be capable of holding a whole year's worth of video releases. Around 10 years down the line that could be expanded, creating iPods that can hold all the music ever sold commercially.
He said: "In 12 years, why not an iPod that can carry any video ever produced?" The Google exec said tech is now pursuing a price volume game - searching for the price point at which content will take off for the mainstream.
He added: "It's clearly begun happening," citing iTunes' 99¢ per song download model.
And, Arora believes, mobile is likely to follow the same path. "Mobile is not going to be a different thing," he added - and if the mobile industry is to capitalise on the growth of content, it would be wise to ape the development of the internet.
He said: "The mobile industry has to go through the same phases the internet has gone through... Mobile will have the same learning curve. It would be somewhat foolish to leapfrog the stages the internet went through."But before they get there, they will need to satisfy the basic things people are used to doing on the internet."
As a result, the Google VP believes, there will be greater convergence between mobile and internet, as consumers expect to be able to access traditional web content and services on the mobile platform.
Google has already begun to exploit the union by expanding its ad sales business to the world of mobile, after signing deals with operators in Asia and Europe.
The search giant's CEO believes advertising will eventually go on to play a greater role in the mobile industry: eventually doing away with subscriptions in favour of users agreeing to watch targeted advertising.
Comments
There are 12 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Oh, joy!
2. Andrew Lewis
And what will happen to the art of conversation?
Will we degenerate into "grunt once for yes and twice for no"!
A sad but inevitable decay in society.
3. anonymous
Apple didn't invent the hard disk mp3 player with the iPod. Compaq invented it two years earlier (1999) with the Personal Jukebox 100. And a Korean company, HanGo, invented the mp3 player itself 3 years earlier with the MP3Man.
4. anonymous
Oh, some Google Exec has said SOMETHING - ooh, let's jump like school girls and print it immediately ::rollseyes::
5. anonymous
He didn't say "all", he said "any". I read it to mean that an iPod might hold any one video ever produced, as in the largest video that anyone might possibly produce.
6. vax
Interesting that Google, the network company itself is thinking that a local-storage iPod will be the mobile future, rather than a bandwidth-oriented "terminal" with an amazingly good interface that ...uh... finds all the stuff you need on the (google) network... thanks to, uh, google...
7. froggy57
Don't you mean, 'What has happened?'
8. Deirdre' Straughan
Nice idea.
It would be even nicer if there was a way for non-US residents to obtain all that video legally. At present, we are cut out of the free "airings" of popular US TV shows (see http://www.beginningwithi.com/tech/ideal_tv.htm for a screenshot of the welcome I get from ABC). It is also impossible to buy the shows from iTunes unless you have a credit card billed to a US address.
Helloooo, Hollywood - rest of the world calling! We are willing to spend money to put your shows on our iPods, and you won't let us. How stupid is that?
9. anonymous
This is most likely an incorrect statement. What is not in the equation here is that video content is likely to expand by 1000 fold over 12 years and continue rxpanding at that rate or faster into the future. Content is likely to move into 3D over the same period.
10. Andy Greenwood
This isn't news!! He's just read Peter Cochrane's essay from abouth 18 months ago. He must have been going through his back issues of he Silicon Newsletter. It seems that even Google VPs can be guilty of plagiarism.
11. Chris
Next step: Store yourself in your iPod
12. Phil Barre
This should not surprise anybody. In fact, it is understated. A portable, affordable device will hold everything. Every bit of information ever written, recorded, filmed, or photographed. It will constantly update. It will talk to you and listen to you. It will update the world on you, and you on the world in realtime. Much more. A few petabytes, wireless bandwidth, IMS networks. There is absolutely nothing in this vision that requires a discontinuity.