Yes, it’s that time of year again. How can you tell? The first few leaves just starting to lose their green sheen? The brilliant Popham Beach sunsets arriving just a bit earlier every day? The Sox’ drive to the Series and the Pat’s hopes for another Super season?

Nope. It’s the season when (for the last few years, anyway) technology companies from Tokyo to Redmond and Taipei to San Jose all call press conferences to announce that this year is THE year that their personal digital music players and online music stores will topple the industry-leading iPod and the iTunes Music Store (iTMS). And, as sure as the autumn leaves will glow and go, so these pretenders to the iPod throne will wither and fall away.

Just about every gimmick to unseat the iPod/iTMS combination has been tried, and they’ve all been largely unsuccessful. Napster, that former bastion of music theft turned “legit”, has tried to convince people that “renting” music is the way to go. Millions of songs instantly at your fingertips – that is, until you stop paying your monthly dues. Microsoft, pushing its own Windows Media player software, has tried placing a “Plays For Sure” logo on the myriad of iPod wanna-bes, in hopes of steering people away from the Advanced Audio Codec (AAC)-formatted songs delivered by the iTMS.

Real Networks, proprietors of the Rhapsody online music store, even reverse-engineered (another, nicer word for “hacked”) the iTMS’ Fairplay digital rights management code and called it “Harmony”, all in hopes of getting people to load their iPods with music from their store instead of iTMS.

It’s not working. The iPod/iTMS juggernaut is actually gaining speed and accelerating. 82 percent market share of all U.S. online music sales. Over 500 million songs sold. Almost 22 million iPods out there, six million of them sold in the last quarter alone, enjoying a market share of 74% of all digital music players in the market. By 2006, 30% of all cars sold in the U.S. will offer iPod connectivity. The most popular of all iPod models to date has been the iPod mini, which makes it the most popular digital music player in the world.

But, all good things must come to an end. It was only a matter of time. Someone has finally created a player that can out-play, out-wow, and out-perform the iPod mini. The company? Sony, with a new digital Walkman? No. Rio? No, they quit, actually. Creative? Uh-uh.

Here’s some technical specs for the new iPod killer. Two models, with 2 GB and 4 GB of flash RAM respectively. 500 and 1000 song capacity. Competitively priced at $199 and $249. Color display, 14-hour battery life. Thin as a #2 pencil (.27 inches), weighing only 1.5 ounces (about the weight of stack of eight quarters). 3.5 inches tall and 1.5 inches wide. Can also hold and display photos, up to 25,000 of them. Available today. Mac and PC compatible.

So, who can create and bring to market a player that will assume the iPod mini’s throne? You guessed it. Apple can. It’s called the “iPod nano”, and it will replace the mini as the middle-ground between the iPod and the iPod shuffle.

This week Apple also finally unveiled details of their partnership with Motorola and Cingular to bring iTunes to the mobile phone market. The phone, called the ROKR (say “rocker”), is your basic full-featured modern phone. It also has stereo speakers, a camera that can record video, Bluetooth, is Mac and PC compatible, and will hold 100 songs. It’ll retail for $250, and is available today.

© 2005 Peter F. Zimowski