A few wireless companies, including Sprint, began moving down this path at the peak of the dot-com boom, although that first generation of phones and services had little effect on the market.
More recently, wireless operators have begun working with companies such as RealNetworks to offer more advanced services, including access to streaming multimedia, and some downloads. The Treo 600 can play back songs downloaded from RealNetworks' music store, for example.
As cellphone makers edge back into the market, analysts say, they will need to make an aggressive push if they hope to make any headway. But real convergence -- the kind where customers might forgo an iPod because they're buying a Motorola phone -- is still some ways off, they say.
"Someday we'll get to the miracle iPod phone, but that day is not happening in the next 18 months," said Mark Mooradian, senior director for MusicNet, a large digital music service.
Clash of cultures
Some stumbling blocks are purely technical, having to do with details such as battery life and the storage capacity of phones. In addition, the ambitions of the wireless carriers and record labels to turn mobile phones into a wholly separate music market may also keep the devices apart for some time.
Additionally, much depends on the mobile service providers themselves, such as Sprint and AT&T Wireless, which are typically the ones to choose which phones consumers can use with their services. Their needs, as much as the demands of the consumers themselves, will help determine which design features find their way into the mainstream. Service providers are interested in supporting music, but they want to ensure that it makes them money, too.
The problem for the carriers, Goodman said, is that the digital-music market is being quickly defined by companies such as Apple Computer, with its iPod player and iTunes Music Store. The emerging model is one where customers are used to the 99-cent download, and where music distributors are letting hardware sales subsidise the razor-thin profit margins made by the music services themselves.
