James Delahunty
16 Mar 2005 2:45
The market for MP3 players may quadruple by 2009 according to iSuppli. They believe that the amazing growth is fuelled by the amount of new HDD-based MP3 players that have appeared following the overwhelming success of Apple's iPod device. There were 36.8 million total MP3 player shipments in 2004 and iSuppli expects this to rise to 132 million units in 2009 which is at a compound annual growth rate of 29.1% from 2004. This years growth is expected to slow compared to that in 2004 however.
Unit shipments of MP3s will rise to 57.7m in 2005, up 57% from 36.8m in 2004 according to iSuppli. Apple demonstrated the dominance of HDD-based players over Flash-based players as they can hold much more data. Apple's iPods can hold thousands of songs, hours and hours worth of playback. Of course this expected growth is good for Apple, but it is likely we will see more tech companies working to beat the iPod and take a bigger chunk out of the market.
Sony has already challenged the success of the iPod but only so far with flash memory based players that it hopes will dethrone the iPod Shuffle. The new Sony devices have one major advantage over the iPod Shuffle; they have a display, which the iPod shuffle does not. Sony also has said it will release a device later this year it is confident can knock the iPod off the top spot.
Source:
PC Pro