Interesting start

Now that we're at the end of the 1st quarter of 2009 I thought it would be interesting to share a few thoughts on the what's happened so far.

I think it is fair to say that the main push of the mobile music news has been around the iPhone platform. The iPhone has dominated mobile news to the point where anything else has been of interest just because it isn't iPhone related. Of course there has been other news, like yesterday's announcement of the OP-1 from Teenage Engineering. An amazing looking device, let's hope it doesn't turn out to be vaporware.

But hardware like that costs money to develop and prototype, and it is good to know that even in this global recession that someone is still innovating in hardware. I hope it materialises and isn't just too expensive to buy when released.

Of course a recession hasn't stopped Apple's app store from being an $800 million business. They must have got something right as so many other vendors are following suit. And even though there are lots of less than useful applications on the app store there has been some really innovative stuff, like the Vocoder SV-5 from YUDO:


NLog Synth the excellent synth app.


Randgird the mini studio app, and Technobox the 808 / 909 emulator.

Other apps like iShred have brought real innovation in the guitar space, and Noise IO and Beatmaker have brought the beginnings of application integration to the platform. There are lots of other excellent apps, too many to cover in this post.

Of course, as I said before, not everything happens in the iPhone space. BugLabs announced their innovative BugSound module amongst a number of others, although we're still waiting for these to be available in the UK. And of course, Mixtikl has been one of the biggest things to hit Windows Mobile music in recent months.

In the Palm space of course the Pre and Palm's new webOS have sounded the end of music app development for Palm devices. A big shame if you ask me. However, Sunvox continues to go from strength to strength on the Palm OS and windows mobile too.

So, lots to look forward to in the next few months, with Apple's iPhone 3.0 and possibly new hardware too. YUDO's spring line up on apps which I hope will arrive and not turn into vaporware. The OP-1, Mixtikl on the iPhone and maybe even Sunvox too? Who knows?

I'm looking forward to the next few months being a little quieter in terms of new apps coming out, at least until the summer when Apple delivers 3.0. But even so, I'm sure it'll be an eventful time, as I think 2009 is shaping up to be a big year for mobile music.