“The market for MP3 players is set to double between 2005 and 2009 amid strong demand from consumers and hundreds of vendors striving to follow the success of Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod, a DisplaySearch Inc. analyst said in a conference in Tokyo on Thursday,” Paul Kallender reports for IDG News Service. “This year, the global MP3 player market should exceed 50 million units. That’s nearly a third bigger than last year’s figure, according to John Jacobs, DisplaySearch’s director of Notebook Market Research… ‘We estimate many other products are beginning to gain traction. By 2009, we expect the total market to surpass 100 million units,’ he said.”
“Apple’s lineup of iPods will account for about two thirds of this year’s market of about 21 million hard disk-based players. The market for flash-based players will reach about 30 million units this year, and the company’s iPod Shuffle will account for about a fifth of those, he said,” Kallender reports.
Full article here.
is this a surprise by any accounts?
any thoughts on what will be the next popular portable music thing? first we had cassettes, then cds, now mps, whats next?
yes I know i missed a few other things in-between.
What’s ahead? Hmm… let me blow the dust off my wooly copy of Bill Gates’ “The Road Ahead” here… AH.
He says we’ll soon have musical-movie players disguised as, uh, PAINTINGS hanging in the halls of our homes. The, uh, chipset which lies at the heart of each wall hanging will have technology so advanced they can match your mood with the perfect tune, every time. So that every time you walk into a particular room, you hear that special song… every time, without fail. Every time.
One wonders whether the paintings will be impact-resistant.
That, and they’re gonna put RADIOS in cars. You know, so you can drive around and listen to stuff.
MW “likely.”
Sir Stogey– I laughed out loud at your post. You’re so bitter, you could make a lemon pucker!
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”tongue rolleye” style=”border:0;” />
Hmmm, 1/5 of the available market for the shuffle? Although starting from zero this would normally be considered a smashing success, compared to the iPod success it seems a bit low. Will this be ramping up or is the lack of a screen or other features perhaps holding them back?
What Old Stogey said is true. Yeah, hard to believe. It was on VH1.
Go rent the movie “Anitrust” they make fun of Bill Gates a lot and even make fun of that exact painting idea.