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The company who gets the handset makers may also become the
winner among the emerging Internet music stores.
Apple's iTunes Music Store, which was the first to market,
is currently the most popular music download service, generating
the majority of online music sales. Microsoft has just revamped
its US MSN Internet music store to boost disappointing sales.
If Apple's iTunes Music Store customers want to play their
tracks on the move, they have to buy one of Apple's iPod portable
music players, or burn their songs on a compact disc (CD)
and play them on a portable CD player.
Apple has sold over four million iPods since the launch two
years ago. That number which has helped triple Apple's share
price, but it is dwarfed by the handset market.
In the smartphone segment alone, more than 20 million units
are expected to be sold this year.
Smartphones, whose sales are expected to rise to around 40
million units next year, are the top segment of the mobile
phone market and feature slots for memory cards that can store
up to 2 Gigabytes of songs -- good for some 2,000 minutes
of music.
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