The Sony PSP will challenge the iPod

At least that’s what Andrew House thinks (he is an Executive vice President of Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA). In his view the 2GB Universal Media Disc (UMD) of the Sony PSP could become a medium to sell music at some point. I think that unless UMD becomes writable, I would not be interested. Why would I buy a music format that’s incompatible with anything else? I want to burn my own UMDs.

In the end, the biggest challenge to the iPod is the cellphone. With mass-storage capacity exploding and power consumption going down, cellphones will soon reach the point where they can be used effectively as MP3 players, carrying thousands of songs. Samsung already offers a cellphone that has 4GB of storage. That’s the storage capacity of the iPod mini.

Cellphones could also stream music from your home or server. Apple knows this is coming and has already started to team up with Motorola to embed iTunes in cellphones.

[forbes]