A cellphone that can store as much MP3 music as iPod Mini MP3 player will be launched by Nokia later in 2005.

The move follows Sony-Ericsson’s unveiling in March of a music-storing Walkman phone and marks another nail in the coffin for pure MP3 players. Cellphone makers are betting that people will prefer to carry one gadget rather than two.

Like the basic iPod Mini, Nokia’s new phone incorporates a diminutive 4-gigabyte hard disc drive capable of storing at least 3000 music tracks. By comparison the first Walkman phone – the W800, also to be released later in 2005 – will store about 150 tracks on a 0.5 gigabyte flash-memory card.