Juicier Apple iPod By 2012

Apple iPod has already revolutionized the face of portable music players, and one Google executive says the best is yet to come.

It was only five years ago that consumers had not even heard of the Apple iPod MP3 player; now you would be hard-pressed to find someone who does not own the device. At a recent conference, one Google executive said that iPod would expand their reach in the media field over the next decade.

The world’s top-selling MP3 player, Apple iPod, already holds the monopoly on the market, having already sold over 70 million devices since it’s release five years ago.

The mere image of the sleek iPod has become a cultural icon for the current generation, and owners of the device cannot imagine how they ever survived without the portable music player.

If the iPod has only been on the market for five years and has already changed the face of media so vastly, imagine what it will be capable of in ten years.

Google’s Vice President of European Operations, Nikesh Arora, recently spoke at the FT World Communications Conference and told attendees that iPod will have almost unlimited storage potential for music and video in the near future.

Arora said the potential room for growth was due to the falling prices of storage and increased volume-to-size ratios.

Arora predicts that by 2012 iPod will have released a new model, at prices comparable to those of the device currently, that will be capable of holding an entire year’s worth of video content.

He also speculates that in another decade the device will be capable of holding every song title ever commercially released.

“In 12 years, why not an iPod that can carry any video ever produced?”, Arora said, as reported by Jo Best.

“It’s clearly begun happening.” He said in regard to the current 99-cent cost of songs from iTunes.

The Google executive also stated that he believes the mobile phone industry will undergo a similar transformation. “Mobile is not going to be a different thing, and if the mobile industry is to capitalize on the growth of content, it would be wise to ape the development of the Internet.”

Arora goes on to say that, “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 Nikesh Arora sees it, the iPod has unlimited potential for growth over the coming years, and believes that the same is true for the mobile phone industry.

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Autmn Davis is a staff writer for murdok covering ebusiness and technology.