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More blood on Apple iPod’s Click Wheel: iRiver pulling out of Europe?

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 · 12:38 pm · 23 Comments

“Korean jukebox manufacturer iRiver appears to be on the verge of pulling out of the European market following the sacking of its Euro PR team. Its marketing headquarters for Europe will now shift from Germany to an in-house department in Korea, suggesting that the company will cease to launch new products in [Europe],” Mark Wilson reports for Yahoo! News. “The problem has been the usual white-and-chrome bully the iPod has around a 90% share of the hard-drive market, and about 50% for flash players. This has left only a few scraps for the hundreds of other manufacturers to fight over, and many are now bowing out and concentrating on other areas.”

Full article here.

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Comment Feed

23 Comments

1 2 Next »

MikeR

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 1:51 pm · Reply

Capitalism at its finest!
Charko

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 2:00 pm · Reply

How terribly sad!
jackspratt

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 2:05 pm · Reply

if iRiver’s departure from the MP3 player market is referred to as “bowing out”, then…when it happens…Creative’s Sim Wong Hoo will be “dragged out of the market screaming, kicking and peeing in his pants.”
Tempus Fugit

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 2:06 pm · Reply

How terribly sad!

yeah… my heart bleeds…
shipwithsails

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 2:21 pm · Reply

I love my iPod Nano but I have always been curious about the Shuffle (I have one of those also). The Shuffle works fine but actually is very un-stylish. I use it because the iPod/iTunes/iTMS integration is so elegent). I also have an iRock flash player and it is much prettier to look at and has a display to boot. My son now uses the iRock to play music in his car (through cassette player). I am amazed that the exceedingly simple Suffle has been able to capture such a big chunk of the flash market. I know the Nano is part of that but the Shuffle I fully expected to have been design upgraded at MacWorld. Even with Apple owning such a big chunk of the market there are still dozens of companies out there making mp3 players in small quantities and making money doing it. Amazing.
macbones

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 2:30 pm · Reply

“there will be nothing to stop us this time. . .”
Macromancer

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 2:39 pm · Reply

I love how those Euros refer to it as sacking. It’s great!
botox

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 3:22 pm · Reply

iRiver, cryRiver, what’s the difference? Cry me a freaking river if they die!
macnut222

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 3:22 pm · Reply

“”The problem has been the usual white-and-chrome bully the iPod has around a 90% share of the hard-drive market…”

It’s interesting to see that Apple has 90% hard-drive market share, especially seeing how it was supposed to DROP once the iPod mini went away.
Mike

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 3:29 pm · Reply

Not a good sign in my opinion…

This only makes the competition like Creative who is a distant second to iPod gain more traction as a runner up in the portable player market…

Currently (un)Creative holds somewhere around a 5% marketshare.. If all these other little companies begin going under, Creative could easily gain a few points in marketshare and make it’s way up to say 10%.. If this does happen, more third parties will begin making specific accessories for Creative players which could help strengthen their hold even more as it may begin to be seen as a viable alternative to the iPod…

Much like OSX is now seen as a viable alternative to Windows..

As it is right now.. The Creative Zen Vision M was recently awarded “Best In Show” at CES and is a favorite for people who WILL NOT buy Apple products.. The press and users are also giving it glowing reviews.. See here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000CS7U1C/sr=1-1/qid=1138822021/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-5699143-7099362?_encoding=UTF8

I think it’s much better for iPod’s competition to have a bunch of little players with a 1 or 2 percent market share than say a Creative with a marketshare of around 10%.

2 cents.
Macaday

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 4:02 pm · Reply

Errr this is old news. And secondly iRiver made an announcement subsequently that they were NOT withdrawing from Europe. I’d pull this one MDN.
solarflare

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 4:11 pm · Reply

Crap products – crap company.

Standard business market forces at work – if your products are not upto scratch, then people won’t buy them.

Simple.
Creative Disliker

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 4:20 pm · Reply

Here’s the problem with Creative/Napster vs iPod/iTunes…

Availablity. Ownership. Ergonomic.

Availablity – More songs on iTunes. Napster does not even have video. Why get a video player with out content. That’s like having a DVD player with out any way to buy DVDs.

Ownership – I own my songs with iTunes. I can burn playlists and listen off line. I might have more songs to listen to on Napster, but I don’t own them. I have to stay connected to the internet. With recent upgrades of Napster, I lost the ablity to listen off-line. I put an end to my Napster account after that.

Ergonomic – I connect my iPod to my Mac, click on the song I want to purchase, and that’s that. I can put them into play lists and do what ever. With napster, I had so many problems creating playlists and adding new songs to playlists. The interface is terrible. I was promised that my creative zen xtra would be napster to go ready soon after I got it in April ’05. The player broke by October ’05. It just stopped working. To burn a CD, I would still have to purchase the song.

That new player might work with windows media center, but that requires me to buy a new PC (not going to happen). Then I have to connect to a cable line and set some sort of DVR. I have to hope everything works correctly and transfer without a problem. To many factors just to have a TV show on a 2.5″ screen player.

Why put up with the hastle when I can get everything I need with iTunes?
JohnE

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 4:25 pm · Reply

Complete integrated systems generating seemless user experices is hard work..most companies don’t even know what that means, let alone how to design/develop towards that goal.
JohnE

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 4:26 pm · Reply

…because the sales or finance guy is usually the one in charge.
the other Mark

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 4:51 pm · Reply

Apple needs to tread carefully to avoid a potential anti-trust suit. It may be hard for Apple to lose a suit since it earned its marketshare through competition. However, it could still be an issue as long as the iPod/iTunes system remains closed.
Gil

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 4:53 pm · Reply

Bye Bye. But this is old news……
The Operative

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 5:01 pm · Reply

“You should know there’s no shame in this. You’ve done remarkable things. But you’re fighting a war you’ve already lost.”
macaholic

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 5:12 pm · Reply

Why is it that the same Windows apologists that tell me to get a Windows machine because it’s the most popular, most software etc and so on, and deride my choice of a Mac, are often the same ones that adamantly refuse to even consider an iPod because “everyone has one!”. And people wonder why some think that there is an anti-Apple bias out there. Gee, whhy would they think that? Just because some have an “anything but Apple” mania? I don’t know where that attitude comes from or even why it persists.

Sheep protesting that they don’t want to be sheep?????
But still sheep!
informed

Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - 7:00 pm · Reply

macaholic: Well put.

The problem with hypocrites is that they are blissfully unaware of their hypocrisy. Any attempt to enlighten them as to why they have a double standard, or are just plain hypocritical, is shrugged off as “irrelevant” or a “personal” attack.

I confess to know nothing about iRiver (blissfully not informed nor interested – there is no hypocrisy when you admit it).

But, I resent the “i” in their name as being a blatant co-opt of Apple’s naming conventions. For that reason alone, I have no problem with the market punishing them.

Couldn’t they have used some other lowercase vowel to proceed their name? Try again, iRiver. There are a lot of unused words for products. You could actually make one up (hint: iPepsi or uVolkswagen are bad ideas).