Jo Best
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 vice president 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.
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.
"In 12 years, why not an iPod that can carry any video ever produced?" he said, explaining that tech is now pursuing a price volume game -- searching for the price point at which content will take off for the mainstream.
"It's clearly begun happening," he said, citing iTunes' 99c 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 said -- and if the mobile industry is to capitalise on the growth of content, it would be wise to ape the development of the Internet.
"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," he said. "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 vice president 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 chief executive 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.
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