Mediaholic

Portalplayer, whose providing the chips for Apple iPod, has recently made two interesting press releases with regard to new chips for wireless connectivity of portable media player devices. The first is related to WiFi and Bluetooth, and the second to cellular broadband connectivity. According to CNBC, 95% of Portalplayer sales come from Apple, which is to say, chances are that a WiFi/Bluetooth enabled iPod and an iPod cell phone are both on the way and may even be released in 2006. This confirms our earlier predictions about the iPod and about mobile entertainment devices in general. The real question is what kind of new services Apple is planning to introduce in order to take advantage of these new capabilities and how long will it take them to get it done. We have already toyed around in the past with some ideas about the ways these kind of features can benefit the iPod, however Apple intentions are yet to be revealed. The obvious candidates are an iTunes store that is accessible directly from the iPod and the ability to synchronize your media collection over a wireless Internet connection. While we agree that these features make a lot of sense, we are more interested in the truly innovative stuff such as the ability to listen to a radio station and make a spontaneous purchase of an airing song, or like location free TV. The range of innovative features that wireless Internet connectivity enables is so immense that it is simply mind blowing. All the iPod competitors out there, if they wish to make some strides against the iPod, must focus in these kind of innovations or else the iPod will become even more dominant (yes it is possible, check this article).

We would like to hear from you, what kind of features would you like to see added to the iPod and similar devices when wireless Internet connectiviy becomes available for them?