Mobile Device Introductions Peak In Time for Holiday Rush.(Kinoma Inc)

It was just under a year ago that Microsoft's Bill Gates told attendees at last January's Consumer Electronics Show that computer technology was going to enter the realm of consumer electronics and that Microsoft would be at the helm. Since that announcement, not only has Microsoft presented audio and video compression and rights management schemes, it has entered the mobile device space and created a standard--Windows Media Player 10--upon which many participants have developed their own products.

At the time of Gates's announcement, music downloading was in the early stages of moving to subscription services and MP3 players were already popular with the younger generation. Apple's iPod was a major hit, but soon competitive products began to hit the market and the trend is continuing through this holiday shopping season to include not only music players, but video, multimedia, and games players as well.

One new product soon to be released using Microsoft's standard is the O2 Music Player for Xda II cell phones. The O2 Music Player will soon be released as a free download for Microsoft-powered phones such as Microsoft Smartphone or Pocket PC Phone Edition.

This is an O2-exclusive software application that turns an Xda II cell phone into a mobile music player. It connects directly to the O2 Music service so users can search, preview, download and play high quality, full length music tracks directly through their handsets.

In The Apple Tradition

Kinoma Inc., of Palo Alto, Calif., has released Kinoma Player 3 EX, the latest version of its multimedia player software for Palm OS 5-based handhelds. The new version of the software plays back MPEG-4 video, Advanced Audio Compression (AAC) audio (used by Apple's iTunes), and displays JPEG images as well as the Kinoma movie file format. It can work in conjunction with Kinoma Producer 3, an application that works on Mac OS X and Windows-based PCs.

With MPEG-4 support, users can view up to seven hours of video on a onegigabyte video card, according to a Kinoma statement. The AAC compression codec makes it possible to pack 30 percent more audio on a handheld than with the older MP3 version. A single memory card can store over 22 hours of CD quality audio. Customers can now rip their audio CDs with iTunes and play them on their Palm Powered handheld using Kinoma Player 3 EX. And Kinoma Player 3 EX can display the album art from many iTunes files.