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The high domes over at Ericsson are always boiling the cerebrospinal fluid, trying to cook up new ways to dominate the consumer electronics market. Their latest effort combines two bleeding-edge tech trends: MP3 digital music and wireless telephony. The Ericsson MP3 player is designed to attach to the company’s T28 World Phone. Music is stored in the player via a removable MultiMedia Card (MMC) which holds up to sixty minutes of music (depending on the size of card and the compression rate you use). The unit comes with earbud-style headphones that plug into the MP3 player, feeding you music till a call comes through. If your jams are disturbed by a call, the MP3 player automatically shuts off and the headphones pipe the caller in, while a microphone on the headphone cord transmits your voice. Once you’re finished with the call, press the button and you’re back to groovin' on your Portishead tunes, right where you left off, without ever taking the cell phone out of your pocket. The MP3 player is expected to be released in the third quarter of 2000 for under $200 - about the same as most stand-alone MP3 players. It comes with all the cables you need to get the MP3s from your PC to the storage cards, plus software for "ripping" (i.e. converting) your own audio CDs and organizing your MP3 tunes. A slightly lower-tech option, the FM radio version, is expected in mid-March and has the same call-interrupt features as the MP3 unit. While this is a first generation product, eventually, we may see gear like this that allows for downloading and uploading MP3 directly to the Net, rather than through your PC. And maybe, if the white coats at Ericsson *really* get cooking, they'll figure out a way to let you put someone on hold and make them listen to *your* hold music for a change!
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