“Digital music executives from around the world gathered in here yesterday to powwow about their business. But there was one notable absence, particularly notable because it was the company that was on everyone’s minds and has been the talk of the industry for three years. Apple, whose iTunes/iPod juggernaut continues to dominate the digital music game, didn’t send a rep to the Music 2.0 conference in Los Angeles this week,” Jim Welte writes for MP3.com. “But that didn’t stop conference attendees from talking about them incessantly, mostly because the company has jumped to such a big lead in the space. One panel was even dedicated to the subject, dubbed ‘Can Anyone Take on the iPod?'”
“Amazon is thinking about it, Sony has failed so far, Dell has largely thrown in the towel, and Creative, SanDisk, Samsung, and iRiver are still fighting for second. The answer, according to a panel of industry execs, is a bit of a head-scratcher,” Welte writes. “Pedro Vargas, director of mobile entertainment for SanDisk, said he liked the reported plan of Amazon to create a branded media player that is attached to a subscription service that is also attached to its online music retail operation. He declined to say whether or not SanDisk is the company designing such a device for Amazon, emphasizing that SanDisk’s strategy is to offer portable players at multiple (read: lower than Apple) price points, particularly for younger demographics…. And history–that Apple once had a clear market share lead on Microsoft in the operating system market–is on their side, several execs said. ‘If you look at the numbers, Apple has always been happy with 2-3 percent of the market,’ Vargas said.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “macnut222” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Ah, the SanDisk guy talking smack. Finally. And we thought SanDisk had some class. How silly of us. The Macintosh platform required and still requires huge investments by developers to create compatible software. So, when faced with budgetary contraints, they chose and still sometimes choose to go with the most popular platforms. The iPod simply plays music that can be encoded, for very little cost, in any format the “developers” (musicians and labels) desire: AAC, MP3, WMA, etc. The music doesn’t need to be rewritten, recorded, and remastered. It’s like writing Photoshop once and then pressing a button to translate it for use on Mac, Windows, Linux, etc. To draw an analogy between past Mac OS licensing and the iPod/iTunes symbiotic relationship simply highlights SanDisk’s director of mobile entertainment’s ignorance of the vast differences between the two business situations. Since the distant number two in the player market, SanDisk, still doesn’t understand extremely basic business concepts, the future is bright for conferences featuring ‘Can Anyone Take on the iPod?’ panel discussions for years to come.
Advertisements:
• MacBook Pro. The first Mac notebook built upon Intel Core Duo with iLife ’06, Front Row and built-in iSight. Starting at $1999. Free shipping.
• iMac. Twice as amazing — Intel Core Duo, iLife ’06, Front Row media experience, Apple Remote, built-in iSight. Starting at $1299. Free shipping.
• iMac and MacBook Pro owners: Apple USB Modem. Easily connect to the Internet using dial-up service. Only $49.
• iPod Radio Remote. Listen to FM radio on your iPod and control everything with a convenient wired remote. Just $49.
• iPod. 15,000 songs. 25,000 photos. 150 hours of video. The new iPod. 30GB and 60GB models start at just $299. Free shipping.
• Connect iPod to your television set with the iPod AV Cable. Just $19.
Related article:
SanDisk quietly becomes distant No. 2 to Apple in U.S. digital music player sales – February 09, 2006
The iPod is not the Mac, so stop trying to compare them – August 13, 2004
“…AAC, MP3, WMA, etc…”
Huh? AAC, yes, MP3, yes, WMA..?
The iPod can play WMA? News to me.
Greyarea.
First Post. Nothing at all to say about this topic. Just wanted my name in lights. Now you can all tell me I’m an idiot..!
Bugger
Looking back at history, Apple never had more than 15% of the market so, to say they were once the dominant platform is silly.
Be that as it may, this is a completely different business than operating systems, and to perpetuate this idea that somehow Apple will lose its lead in music because they supposedly lost this huge lead in OS share to Microsoft is just silly. Let them believe that. It just shows how little they understand the situation.
Apple has always been happy with 2-3 percent…
Not any more boyo’s!
They are much happier with 75-80%, Thank You….
Leo
Future is bright?? where is the <sarcasm> tag?
Macaday,
Bugger indeed!
Try the next story….
OK everyone, hold back on the next story and let the man have his glory….
Leo
Vargas obviously hasn’t learned the lessons from making statements that prove to have zero merit…
Maybe he read the book written by Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo; “How to Make Empty Proclaimations Against Apple for Dummies”
@Greyarea
the ipod cannot play WMA. what macdailynews meant, though, is that a piece of music, once produced, can easily be translated to any conceivable format, making it virtually platform-independent.
this is contrasted with software, which has to be portated for each target platform specifically, involving a high cost.
buahaha, how could you not get that?
@Wise Guy
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
I blame too much blood in my caffiene stream
Greyarea
Actually the iPod can play wma files as desgined. Apple has introduced a firmware that doesn’t include the wma codec so it can’t play it back. Hardware wise though it’s easy to do. The linux on iPod project has gotten ogg support, wma support would only be a half a step away if the linux guys actually wanted a wma player.
of course the real question is why? wma is only as good as mp3’s, as oppossed to AAc and Ogg both of which are better quailty.
Anyone know what time the keynote is this morning? Thanks.
Anyone know what time the keynote is this morning? Thanks.
10am Pacific!
Idiot. The Apple was once the world’s dominant personal computer. The Mac’s percentage never went over 15 to 18%.
Apple lost first place in personal computers but at the time there were not many people who owned computers.
keynote at 10am Pacific time, 6pm for those in the UK.
Apple has never been happy with 2-3%, but has refused to compromise its design philosophy to gain market share. Now the rest of the world is finally waking up to them.
Actually, SanDisk is happy with their 3 % of mp3 player market share.
Ah yes, in what technology area does SanDisk have a majority (over 50%) market share? Over 20% market share?
Enough said.
I thought this entire article started off to a very deceptive headline, after all, how many go beyond the headline and maybe half a paragraph anyway?
Digital music industry execs, might have more accurately read Digital music DEVICE industry execs. I was expecting to read about industry execs in the digital music industry (Sony, BMG, Warner, Capitol etc).
With idiots like these “competing” with Apple it is no wonder Apple has established market dominance, and will continue to hold it.
I’m not sure MDN is reading the meaning of the SanDisk quote correctly. It can be read to mean that “as Apple has been content with 2-3% computer market share, so is SanDisk content with 2-3% share of the MP3 player market.”
Of course, I don’t think anyone at Apple is or ever was content with that small share, nor do I believe any company is “content” with such a small sliver of the pie. But it is possible to make money at that level because the whole pie is so large. I don’t think SanDisk was taking a dig at Apple; perhaps just putting the best face on their position.
It blows my mind that all these companies and all their tech can’t think of something to do except chase Apple and the iPod.
If you take ALL the money that the “also rans” are wasting in the iPod chase it probably exceeds the total music industry sales.
They would probably make more profit if they focused on creating an alternative to Windows, a really big market, rather than trying to unseat the iPod.
What these companies (and BS stories) fail to grasp is that Apple is armed, loaded and ready to get down in the trenches to duke it out with the best of them (if necessary), because the R&D and tooling on the Shuffle is fully amortized. Not only that, the Shuffle is compatible with iTunes, the others are not. As flash continues down in price Apple could hit the market with a $14.95 128MB Shuffle and eat their lunch (if needed).
When and if they ever come up with a worthy hardware opponent for iPod they’ll be in for another surprise. Apple will have the infrastructure all in place, up and running, to whip their bums on delivering content, and only to iPod, not their “also ran” hardware.
It’s not an accident that Apple is in this position. It was a risk, a bold plan, brilliantly executed and it’s paying off handsomely. You other players are losers competing for the scraps that fall from Apples table on this one.
Why don’t the other players invent something original?
Actually, Apple’s market share peaked at just over 19% during late ’89 and early ’90. During that period Apple was the number one desktop computer vendor selling more desktops than any other vendor. However, that still meant that DOS (MS-DOS, PC-DOS, DR-DOS, etc. [some with GUI shells on top of DOS and some not]) machines were still outselling Apple’s machines at more than 4 to 1. (You can check your old MacWeeks of that era for the references to the research firms reporting this.)
These numbers are always very tricky. Are they referencing U.S. only? North America only? North America, Europe and Japan only? The entire world? All give different numbers.
I know there is an analysis out on the web (can’t remember who did it at the moment) done within the last year which claims to show that Apple’s market share for desktops was much smaller than this, but it is wrong.
Will Apple ever make it back to that level? I doubt it, but we may someday see 10% again.
Apple is happy to increase it’s dominant position by 2-3% a month. Japan was supposed to be a mature and closed market. Apple came in and now has not just the largest single share, but over 50% of the total market. The others playing in this space know what it would take to compete with Apple but are unwilling or are unable to do what needs to be done.
What it will take to compete effectively with Apple in digital media-
1) A superior product on both the hardware and software side.
2) Widespread distribution.
3) A bunch of advertising.
4) Constant and consistent innovation.
5) Patience– a lot of it.
Pedro Vargas needs to empty his drool bucket. Isn’t that a porn actor?