The MP3 player has proved one of the most popular and successful technologies of the last decade, proving as much of a hit with teens as with adults.

However, recent trends have suggested that the MP3 player, including Apple’s all-powerful iPhone, could be losing popularity with consumers. One of the telling factors could be the fact that prices are on the decline, which usually points to a down turn in consumer demand. Married together with slower sales and the future could be bleak for the MP3 player.

This applies to the iPod as well, which at one time stood toe-to-toe with the Mac as a serious rival for Apple’s most popular product. It too has seen sales on the decline.

Ross Rubin, an analyst for market research company NPD Group, says about the MP3 player market:

Has slowed down a bit, there’s a strong argument for saturation

The problem seems to have stemmed from the fact that new technological advances such as video players and Wifi features added to newer MP3 players have yet to convince the majority of existing MP3 player users to upgrade their devices.

The main problem seems to be with mobile phones, particularly Apple’s iPod, as the features contained on them are catching up fast, in some cases surpassing, those found on MP3 players.

The same thing happened with the PDA some years ago. Consumers realised that there was little need for an expensive PDA when everything it could do, could be done on a mobile phone, for a fraction of the cost; and in many cases for free with a contract.

What the MP3 player does have to its advantage over the phone is the storage capacity. Currently they beat any mobile phone with a built in MP3 player hands down, but as technology improves you can expect that gap to close drastically.

What is more likely is that we’ll see a complete amalgamation of all of the portable media devices into one product. MP3, games console, phone, sat nav, all together rolled into one.

It’s only a natural progression. After all, who’d have thought a mobile phone could play music when it was first invested all those years ago?