How Much Of The Portable MP3 Market Does Apple Really Have?

macsrgood4u · July 24, 2003 6:27PM

There seem to be a lot of figures going around on what market share the iPod has. Today I found several sites that had varying info and my conclusion is thus:

The iPod has 51% of the hard drive market.

The iPod has about 20% of the total MP3 player market.

That is all.

pesi · July 24, 2003 6:43PM

those numbers are very likely to go WAY up soon.

remember... there were 700,000 sold in the year and a half prior to the new model's introduction.

shortly thereafter (within 2 months) the total number of iPods sold surpassed 1 million and shows no sign of slowing down.

dog almighty · July 24, 2003 7:14PM

Especially since it's been released for Windows. Even before then, third party software was made to adapt it. Now think of how well the iTMS will do come this fall (I hope it's fall) when winTunes is released.

hom · July 24, 2003 7:56PM

According to Fred Anderson's conference call, the iPod accounted for 51% of all dollars spent on mp3 players. I think that this is a much more important number than total market-share.

aquatic · July 25, 2003 1:03AM

Other MP3 players just look so stupid in comparison, even though iPods are a tad expensive (I DEFINITELY think they should have kept the 5 gig model. Duhh?)

However, Sony MiniDisc players are still way better in many respects and they've been out for a long time. A) Recording from analog or optical in. Apple makes it so easy to pirate why not just add this in and leave the responsibility to users with Don't Steal Music. I mean come on! Let's say I have some CDs and my iPod in my car but no computer. (My car has no CD player.)

MiniDiscs support lossless compression. It would be nice to see iPods support FLAC. C) iPods can not transfer from one iPod to another. Is there hack to fix this? Will Apple ever support this? What if I own two iPods and don't bring my laptop, and I want to transfer homework, or a presentation? I hear iPods are big in backup and deploying software in education and server environments because they are the great as portable drives.

I think it is the software, not the hardware, that is limiting iPods. If they opened up the OS then 3rd parties could solve the problems, with FireWire mics, hacks, etc.

I am so buying the next iPod with a mic though. Someone please buy my 5gig.

stupider...likeafox · July 25, 2003 5:30AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Aquatic

MiniDiscs support lossless compression. It would be nice to see iPods support FLAC.

No they don't. I've been a fan of MD for a long time but that's unfortunately not true.

It would be much nicer if iTunes supported FLAC, support on the iPod makes much less sense when you could transcode your music from FLAC to 128kbps (or less) AAC and barely notice the size increase over the FLAC file alone.

matsu · July 25, 2003 10:31AM

They're doing well, but I'd guess that some of the numbers were a bit inflated.

The future all depends on how much storage is enough.

Someone could make a smaller sexier device (IBM has a 4GB microdrive) and solid state storage is getting cheaper all the time.

Some people would prefer a 1GB flash based player (with an empty slot) for the same money as an iPod.

iRiver alreay has 512MB models. That's not all the music you own big, but it's a nice amount for a couple of days listening.

So the future may be a little different.

For now, I think it's the best player, but it might not be the best rugged option for long.

aquatic · July 25, 2003 6:21PM

Last time I checked MDs used ATRAC which is lossless. And that is my point, FLAC is almost as small as a huge 320 MP4 file. FLAC would be great for audiophiles like me. I bought the iPod because it could play AIFF. FLAC is less than half the size of AIFF with the same quality.

True. Apple should make models with less storage via solid state memory. They'd be small and cheap. I don't get why they dropped the 5 gig just because they had bigger drives available.

matsu · July 25, 2003 10:40PM

ATRAC is NOT lossless. It's about 1/5th the bit rate of a CD. If you encode from a CD those other 4/5ths are definitely lost. ATRAC still uses a psycho-acoustic model. NOT lossless.

jante99 · July 26, 2003 11:10AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Matsu

ATRAC is NOT lossless. It's about 1/5th the bit rate of a CD. If you encode from a CD those other 4/5ths are definitely lost. ATRAC still uses a psycho-acoustic model. NOT lossless.

Also it depends on the MD recorders Analog to Digital converters. And if you have quality headphones.

It would be cool if Apple released an iPod Pro with a breakout box to use XLR and digital connections. Good for DJs, sound recordist, and radio journalist.

Right now hard drive recorders are big, boxy, and expensive. The iPod would have to record at DAT quality for it to sell though.

aquatic · July 26, 2003 6:26PM

Considering the enormous size of gigs the iPod is heading into, that is a territory to consider. However Apple probably won't do it. I'm sure 3rd parties would. IF they could. Why is Apple being so queer about opening the iPod's OS?

serrano · July 26, 2003 7:37PM

I'll remind you all that the current ipods can record - it's an unsupported easter egg/hack.

pesi · July 27, 2003 8:53AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Aquatic

Considering the enormous size of gigs the iPod is heading into, that is a territory to consider. However Apple probably won't do it. I'm sure 3rd parties would. IF they could. Why is Apple being so queer about opening the iPod's OS?

becasue they don't own the iPod OS perhaps? they just license it. it's made by Pixo.

stupider...likeafox · July 27, 2003 2:42PM

Quote:

Originally posted by pesi

becasue they don't own the iPod OS perhaps? they just license it. it's made by Pixo.

I believe I read that they had ditched the pixo OS and written their own from scratch for the latest models.

How Much Of The Portable MP3 Market Does Apple Really Have?

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