Portable MP3 player sales to grow 50% per year in U.S.

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Posted by	Dan Bell
Posted on	09/12/03 20:45
Number of views	490

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Portable MP3 player sales to grow 50% per year in U.S.

Although not as hot as DVD players, Jupiter research says the digital downloading frenzy is helping to fuel rapid growth of portable MP3 players. They indicate that the trend shall last at least until 2006. Needless to say, hardware manufacturers are ecstatic. Some online services such as Apple, are having a symbiotic relationship right now between their hardware and software products. By using the iTunes service as a loss leader to provide material for the popular iPod hardware, one hand washes the other so to speak. Apparently, it's all about convenience.

Shipments of MP3 players should hit 3.5 million in 2003, almost double 2002 figures, Jupiter said in a report issued on Tuesday. It also said that there will be more than 26 million MP3 players in use by 2006. Starting in 2004, the demand for players with hard drives will surpass that of players with flash memory.

New music players and download services such as Apple's iPod and its iTunes store have "energised the music industry," Jupiter said.

Amazingly, some big names like Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Amazon.com are going to miss this years opportunities. Well, maybe not Microsoft as we have read here they are going to collect royalties on the FAT system used for storing the data. "Portable music players, combined with online music stores and services, will be a strong holiday shopping combination." David Card, Jupiter's research director stated.

Source: ZDnet

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Posted by DeadMan on Wednesday 10 December 2003 01:38

And not a single player has any form of gapless crossfading ability for those DJ mix CD rips or live albums where one track mixes into the next like Pink Floyd's albums do. You can of course make one big MP3 file but then you can't track skip and the player won't tell you the track name correctly. CUE file support is needed of some gapless crossfade facility to make up for MP3's problem of putting redundant data in the header and footer causing an audible gap between tracks. The first player that introduces this feature I will buy!
[edited by Oddball on 10.12.2003 01:39]

Posted by DeadMan on Wednesday 10 December 2003 01:38

deleted by poster
[edited by Oddball on 10.12.2003 01:39]

Posted by cynicalbastard on Wednesday 10 December 2003 16:14

first all solid-state portable player/recorder than is available with greater than 10GB of space that can play uncompressed 44.1KHz WAVs and that has excellent battery life I will buy. Looks like I won't be buying for a while...

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