THE love affair between Singaporeans and the MP3 digital music player seems to be waning as it gets eclipsed by products like do-it-all mobile phones.

Sales of MP3 players, which include Apple's ubiquitous iPod, are expected to drop 3 per cent next year to 502,000 units, according to market analyst IDC.

While this is still considered respectable, the decline is expected to accelerate over time. By 2012, IDC expects sales to slip to 427,000 players, which would be a 26 per cent drop from 2006.

'Music playback remains a hot ticket in Asia, but convergence and competition from other devices... has hit the market for standalone MP3 players,' said IDC's Asia-Pacific director for personal systems research Bryan Ma.

When they appeared about 10 years ago, MP3 players changed the way people listened to music.

They were able to store dozens of CDs worth of music on a palm-size device. File-sharing networks like Napster and Kazaa made available a massive library of music that users could download.

The biggest threats now to the MP3 player are music-capable mobile phones.

A few years ago, most phones were far from ideal when it came to listening to music.

Today, most mobile phones can play music, said Mr Ma. Many models, like the Nokia N95 and Apple iPhone, boast the same sound quality and storage space as dedicated MP3 players.

This, said Mr Ma, has led to users abandoning their MP3 players for a single, do-it-all device.

One who made the switch is undergraduate Lynn Tan, who bought an iPhone last month. 'I can make phone calls and listen to music on the iPhone... There was no reason to carry my iPod around too,' she said.

MP3 players are not the first gadgets to face such a challenge. The personal digital assistant (PDA) has also seen its role threatened by smart phones. Worldwide PDA sales fell 43 per cent between 2006 and last year, according to IDC.

But industry players said it is too early to sound the death knell for MP3 players. Samsung spokesman Irene Ng said MP3 players will 'still be in demand for users who want to enjoy the richest multimedia experiences with dedicated features'.

Mr Ma agrees, noting that phones are not yet a 'total replacement' for MP3 players, which are generally cheaper, smaller and easier to use.

Meanwhile, manufacturers continue to tinker with MP3 players, adding new features to keep customers interested.

Apple's most recent release, the iPod Touch, allows users to play games, watch videos and surf the Internet via a built-in wireless connection.

Samsung, the second-biggest MP3 brand in Asia after Apple, recently launched a social network which lets users upload music and share it with others.

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