At Cellphone Show, the Talk Is About Music

The The New York Times covers CTIA and finds that music via cell phones is the big buzz. As Clint Wheelock at NPD Group pointed out, "wireless carriers were hoping to follow the huge success of the Apple iPod music player."

With more music playing handsets coming to market and the U.S. carriers looking into different business models, such as streaming and over the air downloads, expect to hear a lot more noise on the topic.

Edward S. Snyder at Charter Equity Research expressed skepticism on new phone features, but was optimistic about music phones since listening to music is a mobile activity as opposed to watching video. He believed in time the huge size of the cellphone market "gives carriers and handset makers a chance to become the main source of portable music players."

"It's a very big threat to existing portable music companies," Snyder said.