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I have been staring at people on the bus a lot lately.

Well, staring more than usual, anyway. You see, I would say at least half of the people I share busses with have earphones on while they ride to or from work or school, and I can;t help myself.  I am curious as to what the other end of those little cords are plugged into.

A few weeks ago right after debuting new iPods, Steve Jobs stated yet again that the stand alone MP3 player (or the stand alone ANYTHING really) was dead and would slowly disappear under pressure from converged, multi-purpose devices such as the (wait for the shocker…) iPhone, that it was soon to go the way of the Walkman and the pocket transistor radio, or worse….the 8-Track player (shudder).

Based on that statement from El Jobso, I decided to conduct my own aggressively and gleefully unscientific study of the question. After all, several months ago Julie laid down some very good reasons for keeping both a cell phone and an MP3 player, but are still they relevant? Have things already changed? Just what ARE all these people plugged into? Is the all-to-brief age of the MP3 player, seemingly just begun yesterday, as dead as disco?

Asking the people what music device they were plugged into would be too easy (and also make me seem like an iPod snatcher, stalking my prey)…anyway, they wouldn’t hear me even if I tried, they’d be wearing earphones. Therefore I fell back on several weeks of careful observation and subtle peeking.

Of course this is even a less scientific survey since the 600 pound Apple Gorilla in the corner doesn’t count. iPhones don’t come into this equation since they are not offered by any local mobile providers yet, even though many people have them under the table. However, most people who have iPhones here are twenty-something, loaded or tragically hip…often all three. None of those three tend to describe the people on my bus, which in the mornings and the evenings is usually filled with high school students and IT workers. You know, real salt of the earth types who still tend to be into gadgets.

So what did I find out?

Mainly…as much as I hate to say it, Steve Jobs is right.

I would say at least half of the people who were listening to music on the bus were doing so on their phones. Phones of all shapes and sizes too; superphones, smartphones, dumbphones, middle of the road phones that really tried in school but never found their niche…they were all being used to listen to music on the go, eliminating the need for many to carry multiple devices. This makes sense to me since by and large, these people aren’t listening long enough to seriously drain the battery or need to worry about sound quality. Tehy’re on the bus for Pete’s sake. They just want to hear he new Beyonce hit for a few minutes in transit to kill the time. Also many of the people I was seeing would wish to either avoid the cost of an extra device, or the fact that the more devices you have, the more likely you are to lose track of them and have one stolen in a crowded place like a school. Having a single device do everything they need makes sense for them…and if it may not do quite as much as separate devices would or do certain things as well…they are willing to accept that compromise.

So what about the other half, the ones NOT listening on their phones…what were they using? To be honest, anything and everything…which bears out Jobs’ other point, that MP3 players have become a commodity. I saw multiple generations and types of iPods, Sansa players, devices from Phillips and Samsung and lots of no name Chinese and Korean knock-offs. What of people’s fabled desire to always have the latest iPod due to the status of it and it’s supposed quality? Gone. It appears to have been replaced by a desire for the cheapest, most disposable  player available. If I had to choose one player that I saw most often, it would be the Sansa Clip or the iPod Nano (4th generation I think, but it could have been 2nd or 5th generation, tough to tell).

So what does the future hold for one of my favorite types of gadget, the MP3 player? Well, I feel convergence will certainly continue and likely speed up. More and more people will want the function of an MP3 player to merge with their phones, or their MIDs/Game Machines (such as the iPod Touch) or even their cameras (iPod Nano 5th Gen). Until El Jobso, I DO feel there will still be a place for dedicated MP3 players, but they will be split into two clear market niches: the ultra cheap bare bones players such as the Sansa Clip and the top tier audiophile PMP machines such as the Zune HD. People will be able to justify a separate MP3 player due to either extreme value, or extreme quality…everything in between will converge.

Now if I could find a way to get my two buses a morning to converge into one, I would be fine..but then, I wouldn’t be able to watch people as much.