“The battle for control of the portable music market is intense on one hand we have the Apple iPod which over night revolutionised the music industry on the other hand we have the likes of the Creative Zen Vision M, which Creative Technology is desperately trying to emulate Apples success with,” David Richards writes for Smarthouse. “Then there is the old King the Sony Walkman. So who will get the #2 slot?”

“The only problem is that 75% of portable music buyers have sided with Apple and purchased an iPod for both music and video. While Creative has tried hard to crack the MP3 market they are struggling and during the past 18 months they have made big losses which over time will impact their R&D capability. For Sony there is a big chance that they will take the #2 slot leaving Creative and others to wallow in what could be,” Richards writes. “Creative is struggling and even the new Creative Vision M portable player is desperately trying to emulate the look and feel of the iPod and as Creative plays catch up to Apple major Hi Fi manufacturers like Jamo, Harmon Kardon, Denon and Bose are delivering a new generation of iPod accessories that make the iPod an absolute must have because of its ease of use, design and functionality.”

“Today, although iPod is still kicking the stuffing out of Walkman, Sony’s offering is finally putting up a decent fight. In January, Apple had 45% of the Japanese market for digital music players, vs. 15% for Sony. That’s a modest improvement for the Japanese company, from the 53%/11% split a month before the new Walkman hit store shelves,” Richards writes. “‘The new Walkman is better than what Sony had before, but I don’t think that many people are going to go out and buy one,’ says Ming-Kai Cheng, an analyst at brokerage CLSA. And with the latest iPods offering video, the music-only Walkman has more catching up to do. By 2007, predicts researcher iSuppli Corp., 55% of all music players will also show video, up from 5% last year. ‘Video is now standard because Apple includes it,’ says iSuppli analyst Chris Crotty. ‘You have to match Apple, at least, to compete.’ … In 2005, Apple shipped more than 32 million iPods worldwide, says researcher Gartner Dataquest seven times Sony’s forecast for the Walkman for its fiscal year ending Mar. 31. Facing numbers like that, even a distant No. 2 might well be considered a victory for Sony. But for Creative it’s back to the drawing board and more losses.”

Full article here.
Note that currently it’s SanDisk, not Sony or Creative, that’s the distant #2 to iPod in the U.S. market with 7% of the market according to NPD.

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