Several weeks ago, I posted an article here called Music Goes Mobile.

In part, the article explored mobile device, mobile programming and mobile music executives if they could visualize a time in the near future when music-enabled mobile phones will be a competing music platform with portable music players.

While all three sources I spoke with agreed that the sound quality of mobile phones is dramatically improving, none would daresay that mobile phones would supplant portable music players.

Two analysts quoted in a newly posted Wired News article tend to agree. They envision that for the forseeable future, music players will predominantly be for music, and cell phones for talking- with some music capability as an extra for those users who really want it.

Michael Gartenberg, research director for Jupiter Research (gee, Mike, that title is kind of repetitive, don't you think), tells Wired News' Katie Dean that he and his colleagues "don't see (music over cell) as a displacement any more than digital cameraswere displaced by camera phones."

A key issue for Gartenberg is price. "As long as music phones command a significant premium over regular phones then it's going to be difficult to see how the consumer will embrace them."

Even those mobile users who want to enjoy music won't throw away their iPods. "We think there's going to be a very large middle area where people will use both types of devices," IDC analyst Susan Kevorkian (who I am sure by now is much more than tired of that "are you related to.." question) told Dean.

I see the saliency in both viewpoints, but speaking purely as a focus group of one here, gimme an iPod (or similar device) that also makes and takes phone calls.