RSSiPod beaten in Japan by 30-year-old line of music players
By Tim Conneally | Published September 3, 2009, 3:03 PM
The iPod may be the reigning king of media players, but in Japan, the old king has managed to take back the throne.
Japanese market research company BCN Inc. reports that Sony's Walkman digital music player has outsold Apple's iPod in Japan, according to a Bloomberg report today.
Japan is different from the United States, where the iPod has held more than a 60% market share since 2003, and at times has garnered over 90%. But not too different. The iPod has led the Japanese market for the last four years with roughly a 50% share.
For the week ending on August 30, however, Apple had a 42.1% share of the Japanese market and Sony had 43%. Sony, which 30 years ago championed the personal media player concept with its Walkman portable cassette player, has made it back to the top.
But this isn't a sudden change, Walkman has been in a gradually improving second place place position since Apple took the lead in January 2005. By 2006, Sony had about 20% of the personal media player market. At the same time in 2007, the Walkman had grown to just above 30% while Apple still had around 50%.
What's helping the cause? Experts are saying it's cost, of course...but that may not be exactly why.
In Apple's Japanese Web store, the 4GB iPod Shuffle goes for ¥8,800, the Nano starts at ¥17,800, iPod Classic starts at ¥29,800, and the iPod Touch starts at ¥27,800.
Sony's Walkmen actually stretch into higher prices than Apple's iPods. While the Shuffle-esque E Series cost between ¥7,980-¥12,800, and the S series cost between ¥14,800- ¥19,800, the new X series ranges from ¥39,800-¥52,800.
The Walkman line, however, does offer more options to consumers. with three storage capacities for most of its designs, lots of color choices, and the addition of different form factors, like the W series, which incorporates the walkman into a set of headphones.
I think fatty has been voting himself up on every post and anyone that says anything negative about the iPod down... It's a sad state of affairs when you have to vote yourself up.
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|The iPod and it's proprietary format can suck my ass. I only load MP3's on mine with SharePod, not a single iTunes song. If this reatrded thing didn't interface with my in dash touch screen, I'd piss all over it and get something else.
By the way, when you plug your iPod into your 360, it wont play a lot of iTunes songs. Sweet, huh?
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|So you have one of the 50% that aren't bricks? Who cares if the iPod does not work with that crappy game console. No one outside the uneducated in the United States buys that POS. 54% failure rate?!!?!??
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|The Japanese market is very different from others. Japanese mobile phones (and the mobile phone networks) are all about high-speed video on phones, interactive games, financial tools etc. To these consumers, having an electronic gadget like the ipod which basically does one thing - plays music - is just not enough.
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|Why is that such a big mystery ? Sony beats any other music player hands down in Sound quality...iPods are crappy when it comes to 1 thing that defines a music player...sound quality...
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|I wouldn't say that Sony has the best Sound Quality... that will come down to individual taste. Creative makes same pretty good sounding MP3 players and are consistently rated as having some of the best sound out there....
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|Exactly! I went from (a while back) a Sony net minidisk player to an ipod and was so shocked with it I sold it inside a month and went back to my minidisk.
A year or so later I got a Nano for free in a competition, used it a month and sold it.
I got a Creative Zen a little while later and my minidisk is now stuck on the shelf looking pretty.
Creative or Sony; yes. Ipod; no.
If Apple got someone who knew what they were doing to make the sound processors they'd be onto a winner.
By the way; you think this may be something to do with keeping 'local' business booming and not giving money away to other countries?
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|Mobile music player sound quality? People were listening to 64 Kbps mp3 files and didn't notice. To a large extent, mobile players, including car stereos, have poor sound quality and it really doesn't matter unless you're sitting in an anechoic chamber.
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|Over the years I've had Creative, Samsung, Sony MP3 players. These three are probably the top players in term of sound quality (Cowon is said to be considered to be also amongst the best). My current player is a Sony 639, which sounds slightly better than the Samsung. My Creative Zen was slightly behind these two (the bass lacked a bit of punch on it), but not by much.
iPod always sold because of its features rather than its sound quality, which is sad IMHO. People who listen to music with quality headphones and properly encoded files usually go with one of the mentionned brands.
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|Quite often it comes down to the headphones (and speakers). You have to test these players with the same quality headphones (which means not the bundled junk in 90% of the case, my Sony 639 being the first one that I bought and came with better than average headphones).
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|People often don't buy because of quality... people buy something because everyone they know has it. iPod is hip to have so people buy it because its the hip thing to have regardless of whether it is better or not. These day, the iPods are more of a fad than anything because there are better options at lower prices like the Creative Zen. Looking forward to testing out the new Creative Touch MP3 player coming out this month!
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|Actually, the Sansa players have the best sound quality IMO. The iPod sounds tinny mo matter what the EQ selection in settings is set to.
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|I love hearing people talk about sound quality and MP3 in the same sentence. Really funny to those of us who know what sound quality really is.
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|"Why is that such a big mystery ? Sony beats any other music player hands down in Sound quality"
Sure, if you have been at the pub all day.
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|Eeh...yeah but you're forgetting a key player here: Headphones. With the right ones any of these player will actually sound equally good. Although, If Apple would have a proper customizable equalizer instead of stupid presets that would be great :)
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|yes yes they inched ahead.. if you exclude iphone sales.. which is the best sellign phone in japan..
This is yet another example of poorly researched, fail reporting at betanews.. the funny thing is the report is posted 12+ hours after the original.. funny how this always happens here no?
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|Did you fail to see that the article is about personal music players, and not phones?
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|This is a Microsoft sponsored web site, what do you expect them to say?
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|Your point is quite valid. If people carrying an iPhone (or any portable gadget that can play music) didn't buy a separate music player (95% of them didn't) -- then the iPhone is indeed an mp3 player.
Stand-alone players are a complete waste of money, unless, like me, you spent under $50 cuz your cell phone is a basic phone and you needed a quick solution to hear music on-the-go. In other words, if I wanted to spend $100+, I'd be a moron not to upgrade my cell at the same time...
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|Stand alone players are not a complete waste of money. The iPhone is not rugged and cannot tolerate the abuse that the stand-alone players can like the Creative Zen. No matter how many times you drop it, it still works. You get it wet, it still works. It depends how you plan on using it.
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|Upgrade to Snow Leopard
Windows takes your civil rights!
NEWSFLASH! People who don't know anything about Operating Systems and don't want to upgrade: Shouldn't!
Fatty sees these articles and claims Pro MSFT bias.
Priceless.
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|I saw a different version of the story which was so vague as to make me think that the Sony cassette recorders/players from 30 years ago had somehow outsold Apple's iPod line. After all, the iPod line quickly outsold all cassette Walkman models in just a few years.
The one thing you didn't mention was that Sony, for all intents and purposes, dropped their ATRAC* copy-protected audio codec so that DRM was no longer forced on people. Knowing that Japanese tend to rent and copy means that Sony's ATRAC* codecs were a barrier.
The colour choices mean a lot in Japan but it's surprising that so many trust Sony. Besides, Sony is everywhere. I'm thinking that as prices of touch screen models come down and the iPhone app store comes into play (and there are a huge number of Japanese applications), iPod sales will go upward again.
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|Waiting for fatty to comment and call all the people in Japan idiots because they chose something besides an iPod.
I wonder if Sony does a lot of marketing of their MP3 player in Japan and maybe that is why they have been able to topple the iPhone in market share, even if its temporarily.
Here in the U.S., it seems that only Apple really does much marketing of an MP3 player... have heard a few radio commericals for the Zune HD. I wonder what would happen if Creative and Sony started marketing heavily here in the U.S.
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|Where is fatty? He must defend Mr. Jobs as quickly as possible. Or has the love affair hit a bump in the road? Only time will tell.
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|Funny, Sony has no where near the smart phone sales of the iPhone. But oh yea, you are an idiot troll. What is new.
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