Market research firm In-Stat has released its latest report, “Portable Digital Audio Players: Moving to the Beat of a Booming Market,” which shows that the worldwide MP3 player market — including both hard drive-based and flash-based devices — reached US$4.5 billion in sales in 2004. Analyst Stephanie Guza said the situation is “exploding,” with an almost 200% increase in sales over 2003 and a projection of 104 million units sold annually by 2009. 27.8 million MP3 players were sold in 2004.
Ms. Guza reported that Apple leads the worldwide market with a 30.2% share; Rio, iRiver and Creative make up the company’s major competition. She also said that flash-based MP3 players with 1GB or more storage will reach just over 20% of that worldwide market subset by the end of 2005. Domestically, Ms. Guza noted that a 2005 consumer survey showed that 25% of U.S. respondents said they own an MP3 player, up from 16% in 2001.
“As competition heats up, vendors are striving to differentiate products by offering a wide range of price points, memory capacities, and features,” Ms. Guza said in a statement. “As a result, we are seeing increased segmentation. For example, the hard disk drive (HDD) digital audio player segment can be sub-divided into two categories: the 1-inch or smaller segment and the 1.8-inch segment.”