Om Malik notes in GigaOM that it appears Apple has done well again this year with Christmas iPod and iTunes gift card sales.

As for me, I “gave” myself my first iPod as an early Christmas present. Up until now I’ve happily listened to my music on my laptop, but as my air travel has picked up again and it’s a royal pain to use a laptop on short haul flights in coach, I’ve seen more and more need for a dedicated digital audio player. And thanks to security theater, an iPod is more useful than a cellpod for US domestic air travel IMO.

So what did I get? A shiny black 8GB Nano (no, it wasn’t a Shuffle) which nicely holds just about my entire music collection plus an iSkin for protection and a pair of Sony MDR-NC6 headphones for a little bit of entry-level noise canceling love.

I guess if I’m any indication, it was indeed a very iPod Christmas.

Update: iPods topped Amazon’s 2006 charts, too.

Everybody’s been blogging about the Palm+Microsoft lovefest so I thought I’d cover two other new devices that might be important and more widely used in the long run.

Both Motorola and Nokia announced 2 megapixel cellcams yesterday. They both support memory cards and various digital audio formats, promising to be good cellpods as well as phones and cameras.

Motorola Razr V3x has fixed a lot of the Razr V3 shortcomings I blogged about previously. No mention of whether V3x will support at least EDGE if not WCDMA, but I’m guessing both since the lower resolution of its two cameras, an inside-the-flip VGA cam, is meant for video conferencing. It supports a 2MPix external camera with LED flash, hopefully of good enough quality so that I can finally check off “quality cellcam” from my must-have list. It doesn’t appear to support WiFi, and I think I’m dreaming if I really hope to see FRS in a handset, but the TransFlash memory slot allows you to expand storage up to 512MB. This should allow for more digital music and photos by far than Papa V3.

Nokia 3250 launches Nokia’s new XpressMusic line of digital audio player oriented cellpods. According to the press release, XpressMusic guarantees a phone will provide:

• Great audio quality
• Dedicated key(s) for fast and easy access to your music collection
• Play, talk, and play – music pauses when a call comes in, resumes when the call has ended
• Use any headphones for listening with standard 3.5mm jack
• Extended battery time (minimum of 10 hours for music)
• Substantial storage capacity for a large number of songs
• Create and edit playlists on the go
• USB 2.0 support for fast and easy transfer of your music
• Wide support of audio formats – including MP3, M4A, WMA, AAC and eAAC+
• Easy access to over-the-air music downloads

Dedicated music keys, use of a standard 3.5mm jack, and USB 2 support are all spot on. I’m not sure I like the rotating bottom which swaps keypad for music controls, but I’m willing to wait til I hold one in my own two hands to pass final judgement. Other 3250 features include Series 60, the previously mentioned 2MPix digicam, stereo FM radio, GPRS and EDGE, the very cool ability to share playlists using SMS or Bluetooth, and support for microSD cards up to 1GB in size. (Note: I believe this makes 3250 the first announced Nokia handset to use microSD instead of RS-MMC.) Details can be had from the Nokia 3250 presentation, 3250 data sheet, and the XpressMusic backgrounder.

It appears that both Nokia and Motorola are finally getting their acts together with higher resolution cellcams and standard, expandable memory. It will be interesting to see if those trends continue across other new as-yet-unannounced handsets from the dualing duo. And if the audio quality of 3250 is as good as promised, Apple+Moto may need to innovate new ROKR’s in double time.

Nokia has announced a Music Pack to further sweeten the MP3 player capabilities of compatible Pop-port enabled handsets. Visit the Music Pack homepage or read the specs and FAQ.

What you get in the pack:

• Nokia Audio Adapter AD-15 (lets you plug in standard 3.5mm headphones)
• Nokia 256MB MMCmobile card MU-9 (you can up this yourself to 1GB RS-MMC if you need more space for tunes)
• Nokia Stereo Audio Cable CA-72U (converts the Audio Adapter output into RCA connectors to plug into a stereo system)
• Nokia USB MMC/SD reader DD-10 (an MMC and SD card reader, for loading tunes onto the RS-MMC card)

Music Pack has apparently only been announced for EMEA availability so far, but marry the pack with a 1GB RS-MMC and a 6630 or 6682, though, and you’re getting awfully close to what I believe a successful cellpod needs.

Is this a carefully timed response to ROKR E1 destined to be available in other geos too sometime soon? You be the judge.

Following up on my ongoing love affair with cellpods:

Apple and Moto recently launched the ROKR line of cellpods with ROKR E1, the world’s first iTunes enabled cellpod.

This much anticipated gadget promises basic iPod playback functionality built into an entry level but functional GSM-based, Bluetooth-enabled cellcam. On the surface this seems to be a great opportunity to converge two of the devices you might be lugging around (cell phone and MP3 player) into one smaller, svelter luggable (cellpod). Before I jumped in to buy one, however, I revisited the criteria I’m looking for from a cellpod. From my earlier “What cellpods need” post:

1. simple external music controls
2. reasonable music fidelity
3. at least 1-2GB storage available for songs

Although ROKR E1 does provide an iTunes button making music access fairly straightforward and has reasonable sound quality both with the built-in speakers and provided earbuds, it fails on available storage. No matter how much flash memory one might have available in the phone, E1 is currently limited to 100 songs maximum. 100 songs maximum…I have more than 100 songs just from U2!

This seems crazy to me. Why limit the number of songs so severely? I suppose Apple and Moto are testing the ROKR waters with this first model, but with tiny dedicated music players such as the simultaneously launched iPod Nano able to store up to 4GB of music (my entire MP3 collection is under 3GB), why would I bother with ROKR E1?

My recommendation: Wait for a future ROKR model with Nano-like storage before jumping on the iTunes cellpod bandwagon. (If you just can’t wait, however, Amazon has a pretty good deal on E1 with new Cingular activation.)

Writing about the differences between cellpods and iPods, he notes:

There’s only one real significant remaining difference between iPods and music phones, and it’s significant, but certainly not insurmountable

The diff? Usability, especially the UI. I agree with Carlo when he suggests:

Vendors should…offer users full-featured media players where users can manipulate files and playlists and do other functions, but the primary interface should be a simple play button that quickly fires up the tunes

Cellpods need simple external controls a la iPod Shuffle. If they add that, comparable storage capacity (at least 1-2GB), and reasonable music fidelity, they’d finally be getting into the ballpark of iPod.

Maybe Apple’s seen this writing on the wall, too, and that’s why they licensed iPod tech to Moto to begin with? Should be interesting to watch as more interesting cellpods are announced and come on the market this year.

Watch this space for more info on upcoming models.

I’ve been reading the deluge of reports and press releases from the 3GSM World Congress 2005 which wrapped up yesterday in Cannes. Expanding upon last year’s limited Sun and Intel & Nokia 3GSM posts, I thought this year I’d summarize the major wireless developments via links to various 3GSM bits from around the Web.

Starting with the official site and then jumping around per my whimsy:

• Official 3GSM news page (aka press release central)
• CommsDesign’s links to important 3GSM news
• Everybody made cellpod announcements: Nokia and Microsoft (Russ isn’t surprised), Motorola and Apple (well, sort of), Sony Ericsson, even Sendo (plus read Business 2.0′s take here)
• Motorola is working with Skype to build VoIP-over-WiFi capable mobile phones (thanks for listening, Moto!)
• Nokia’s 3GSM key themes (is it just me or are these a bit, well, obvious?) plus newly announced 6101, 6102, 6680 (WCDMA/GSM, Series 60 2nd Ed FP2, dual camera including 1.3MPix on back, but where’s the WiFi?), and 6681 cellcams
• Moto’s 3GSM 2005 site including link to the Moto 3GSM flip book (PDF) which provides a good overview of their handsets and other wireless products
• GSM Association Awards (best enterprise app, best mobile handset, etc.)
• Info on the Pocket 3GSM mobile service (you knew they had to have this, right?)
• Google search for 3GSM Congress

Please let me know what I’ve missed via the Comments link.

eWeek’s article “Three Smart (Phone) Moves” is an interesting look at some of the latest gadgets from the MS Smartphone (Motorola MPx220), Palm OS (PalmOne Treo 650), and J2ME (RIM BlackBerry 7100t) gadget camps.

It’s most interesting to me because in reading the intertwined reviews of the devices, it’s obvious they’re all missing a tremendous opportunity: The first consumer oriented WiFi smartphone will sell like hot cakes!

As eWeek calmly intones:

None of the devices we tested features a Wi-Fi radio…PalmOne and others will have to address this limitation, particularly as Wi-Fi availability and use broadens.

I’m much more emphatic about the need for WiFi in a smartphone now. Nokia 9500 is a start, but it’s more enterprise focused and too expensive (heck, my new Toshiba laptop cost $100 less after rebates!) for widespread consumer adoption. Meanwhile consumers are ready to adopt. Home wireless gear has fallen into the tens of dollars and many people are realizing the advantages of not having to drill holes through their walls and run cables. Businesses see the same advantages, not just for internal networks but increasingly as a draw for customers to linger a little longer and spend a little more money while they do (my favorite WiFi enabled linger spot: Panera Bread). VoIP is also catching on with consumers, and could work wonders on a WiFi equipped handset.

Perhaps most telling of the opportunity is the fact that both the Nintendo DS and the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) handhelds, game devices but also much much more, use WiFi as their main network interface. Let me call careful attention to this for all you handset makers out there:

The main data path for both next gen mobile game systems worldwide is WiFi. Not ethernet. Not USB. Not cellular. Not Bluetooth.

In fact, Sony even seems to be preparing a music download service a la Apple’s iTunes Music Store. Just imagine all of the music soon to be downloaded over WiFi-to-PSP that could instead be WiFi-to-cellpod purchases. There’s money to be made here too for carriers who can see beyond the air interfaces that tend to blind them to the importance of optimized end-to-end services for their subscribers.

The opportunity is on the table before us. Give me a shout if you’d like to discuss this further.

It’s a bit late to the game given that Nokia 6230 has been reviewed various places since the first half of 2004, but PC Magazine’s posted their own short review.

The review is in their typical US- and PC-centric fashion. Worth a read however if you’re looking for a cellpod or a first rate EDGE modem at a discount price.

On the news from Midem front:

Reuters reports that the music industry finally seems to get it.

Rather than continue the long slow self flagellating fight against the inevitable, music execs are embracing online sales and hope to see an expansion of them from 1% of 2004 revenues to 25% by 2009. Cellpods for everyone!

Biz Week’s Olag Kharif has definitely drunk the mobile Kool-Aid.

Power to him and of course I agree with a lot of the things he mentions, including the importance of the ever quickening rise of the cellcam and cellpod. I think he’s a bit overly optimistic in his implied timelines for some of the higher data rate futures (imagine loading movies for home theater consumption via your cell phone on today’s GPRS or even EDGE!) and that HD video will stress wireless systems and give cable and satellite companies plenty of business for the foreseeable future.

If nothing else, it’s an interesting thought piece on the possibilities.