New Nokia cellphone to challenge MP3 players

New Toys!!!

A cellphone that can store as much music as Apple's popular iPod Mini MP3 player will be launched by Nokia later in 2005.

The move follows Sony-Ericsson's unveiling in March of a music-storing "Walkman" phone and marks another nail in the coffin for pure MP3 players. Cellphone makers are betting that people will prefer to carry one gadget rather than two.

Like the basic iPod Mini, Nokia's new phone incorporates a diminutive 4-gigabyte hard disc drive capable of storing at least 3000 music tracks. By comparison the first Walkman phone - the W800, also to be released later in 2005 - will store about 150 tracks on a 0.5 gigabyte flash-memory card.

"But users can buy their own 2 gigabyte memory cards and store almost 1000 songs," says a Sony-Ericsson spokesman. "And remember this is only the first Walkman phone, we will be launching more with greater storage."

Apple has already struck a deal with US phone and chip maker Motorola to jointly create an "iPod phone" capable of interfacing easily with Apple's iTunes music purchasing and track management service, but the relationship has yet to bear fruit.

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