James Delahunty
30 Oct 2005 13:30
Samsung Electronics, a Korean digital products giant, is seeking to have its own version of iTunes to help push its MP3 player hardware forward. The market for MP3 players is so far dominated by Apple Computer Inc. in many countries, and a large part of that success has been based on the fact that the iPod music players and iTunes music store and tied together. Samsung has noticed the effect this had on iPod sales and now hopes to do the same itself.
"We are now in talks with our partners to debut a service program like iTunes of Apple. Our No. 1 priority is to help customers use our products with ease," Samsung president Choi Gee-sung said. "Our items show healthy performances in China and Southeast Asian countries where iTunes services are not provided". Samsung entered the MP3 Player market late but the company has a reputation of taking on big rivals and ultimately beating them.
So far Samsung has stuck mainly to flash based players, which have proved unsuccessful. The demand for HDD-based players is rising all over the world is driven mainly by iPod music players. You can get iPods that store up to 60GB of music and video files. Last year Samsung sold about 1.7 million MP3 players, which was a disappointing figure for the electronics giant.
However the company is quick to point out that the iPod dominance hasn't really affected it that much. "The dominance of iPod has affected us relatively little because the MP3 player business has carved out just a small portion in our portfolio." Choi said.
Source:
The Korea Times