06/26/2007, 10:00am, EDT
Tuesday, June 26th
Study: iPhone for Apple, not music lovers
A new study released Monday suggests that very few consumers use mobile phones to play musical tracks, and that Apple's iPhone is unlikely to fuel a resurgence in mobile music. The highly anticipated mobile handset from Apple recently saw more than a million customers inquire about purchasing the device on AT&T's website, and is the source of a line that began forming yesterday evening outside the Cupertino-based company's flagship Fifth Avenue Manhattan store a full four days prior to iPhone's shipment -- slated for 6:00 p.m. this coming Friday. The survey found that only five percent of consumers sideload songs from their computers onto their phones, and that just two percent of consumers download music from over-the-air services from carriers like AT&T, according to PC Magazine.
Jupiter predicts that iPhone buyers will take interest in the device mostly due to the Apple name and interface, rather than the gadget's musical functionality.
"While the iPhone could raise consumer awareness of, and interest in, music phones from other manufacturers and mobile operators, it is more likely to attract a unique market segment, hard for competitors to emulate," research director Joe Laszlo said. "Apple fans and status seekers will rush out for a first generation iPhone; music fans will probably wait a while."
Filed under: industry
Other story tags: digital music/video
,
, 14
,
,
,
,
,

subscribe to comments
for this article
Even without having used an iPhone in person, just seeing the videos of the music playing functionality, it's in a wh ole other league.
Really, this is one of the stupider things I've seen come from analysts (and that's saying something); a lot of mobile phone owners don't play music on their phones because the music playing functionality is junk on most of them, not because they inherently don't want to.
Ok? Get it?
The iPhone is a nano-level capacity iPod as well as a cell phone. It syncs with iTunes just like an iPod. If anything, with CoverFlow, it's even easier to select music than on the tradition iPod.
Why on earth wouldn't people use it for music?
Any iPod owner who buys an iPhone will certainly put music on it to replace a device.
Now you just have to wonder if any of these comments ever reach the purported "analyst" and whether or not they'd ever consider revising their statements...
Probably not. That would make them seem unsure ;-).