Hard drive iPods will die soon

Warning! This post is very old and may contain information or opinions that are no longer valid or embarrassing.

If I would like to buy a digital audio player today, I would go for an iPod. Its the dominant mp3 player in the world today. It can carry all my mp3 collection. It looks good and comes with a huge user base.

It's today cultural icon. Its white headphones can be spotted from a huge distance. It is not very cheap but it's a monster, that comes with up to 40GB of storage. So probably worth the investment.

However, here is why I think hard drive iPods will die by the end of this year. And Chinese or Taiwanese iPod shuffle clones will prevail.

Flash memory is back. It is getting cheaper everyday and its much smaller and more robust than mechanical hard drives. They also technically reached 8GB! That is double the storage of the crappy iPod mini, and smaller. And it is not Sony or other big names that are selling those amazing flash devices. Big names are still in the 1GB era.

If you come to think of it 8GB storage could carry 1500 mp3 files. All of this in a device that is just the size of a pack of Wriggley's chewing gum.

I would sure go for a tiny device that can carry that much of data, if it reached a sane price. Well, if it existed first!