On the heels of Sprint's partnership with Audible.com comes Cnet reporting that Yahoo and MSN have plans to bring customers digital music through Instant Messaging(IM) in an attempt to compete with category owner Apple Itunes.

What we are seeing is a coming together of mobile devices that can play a variety of content in a variety of formats. Already mobile phones have both the ability to play MP3 files and the ability to handle IM. Therefore the ability to order up the music that you want to listen to during found down time by Instant Message should be close at hand.

The capabilities of cellphones is increasing everyday. The mobile multimedia revolution is building steam. Recently we've seen the first cellphone with a hardisk and everyday their are new developments with the convergence of computers and telephones in the form of the smart phone or the PDA. Toss in the digital camera and you can see where things are headed.

In the near future we will all be carrying powerful mobile devices that handle media, are location aware, take and process visual images both still and video, store huge amounts of data, browse the web, send and receive email, etc.

There are lots of reasons to think about the implications of this:

Your Business Will Be Effected - Regardless of what business you are in this revolution will bring new ways of doing almost everything. We're seeing hints of this with the impact of the RIM Blackberry.
You Will Be Able to Do Things Differently - We all want to find new ways to work smarter not harder. To say that advances in cellphone development are time saving efficiencies is incorrect. What is correct is that life with these hyper capable devices is profoundly different. We will all have to adapt.
Your Kids, Friends, Employees Will Do Things Differently - The fastest to adapt will be the young people. If you hope to stay connected with your kids and or your young employees you need to understand the new power that is shifting to mobile devices.

Besides all of that most of this stuff is just plain cool!

[read]

Comments

[K. Todd Storch]

Peter, very timely posting! This is just the beginning. If the automotive market is smart, they will get on board quickly. I just posted about this and the possible effects on radio at http://toddstorch.typepad.com/business.

Get ready for more deals with cell networks!

Todd