RSSMP3 Player Market Set to Explode
By Ed Oswald | Published June 22, 2005, 10:58 AM
The market for digital audio players is expected to nearly quadruple over the next four years, reaching 104 million units by 2009, according to research firm In-Stat. Over 27.8 million players were shipped last year alone.
A bigger selection of legitimate download sites and lower prices were cited as reasons for continuing growth in the market. Also cited were smaller disk drives and bigger Flash memory capacities, meaning units were becoming smaller yet able to hold the same or more music than their predecessors.
Revenue for digital audio players reached $4.6 billion in 2004, double that of the year previous. And revenues will continue to rise as 3 out of every 4 Americans still do not own a digital audio player - one-quarter of American survey respondents said they own one, up from 16 percent in 2001.
According to In-Stat research, Apple continued to lead all companies with just over 30 percent of the combined Flash and hard-disk based market. Apple's next three competitors -- Rio, iRiver and Creative -- had about one-third of the market combined.
In-Stat expects 1GB or larger Flash-based players to make up over 20 percent of all Flash-based MP3 player sales by year's end, and a significant portion of overall sales. This does not mean, however, that Flash-based players are expected to take over HDD-based players as the storage method of choice among manufacturers.
"I expect demand for both memory formats will always exist," In-Stat analyst Stephanie Guza told BetaNews. She expects music enthusiasts will always grativate toward HDD players, as they will be able to carry their entire music libraries with them.
"On the other hand, there will be a wide audience that is price-sensitive and does not require loads of memory space, especially first-time MP3 player buyers," said Guza. "I expect these customers will turn to lower-priced, Flash-based MP3 players."
The last quote about price being the deciding factor for Flash based players is characteristic of an ignorant market base. Flash based MP3 players are virtually indestructable and therefore will last longer and be better for athletics. I know that's why I bought mine. Also I have a 1GB unit and at 8kbps w/ a 32kbps variable bit rate (MONO) I can store an entire CD in 4MB. So that means I can store 256 CDs, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that an entire music library? Although my primary use is books on tape. I know some people think stereo is the be all, end all, but I can't tell the difference unless a song actually put's the entire beat into the right or left channel as an effect. That means most music, most of the time, will sound no different.
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True, your scenario stores a great deal of ... sound, but it also requires that you encode your music specifically for your player.
On the other hand, I prefer to have the full sound of my mp3s. I can't stand to listen to anything that is encoded at lower than 128kbps on my home stereo..
Call it lazyness but I prefer to store my music in one format and in one location. When I want to change the music on my MP3 player, I simply copy my music onto my memory cards.. I don't have the patience to re-encode each song just to save space on my player..
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