Sony outsells Apple

Despite rising marketshare and growing sales, Reuters reports Sony has a new line-up of digital music players that are "" of Apple's iPod shuffle in Japan. The report says that Sony's new line of flash-based players have displaced the Shuffle as the top-selling MP3 player in in its category, which may be in part due to absence of iTunes for Japan. "Apple is still squashing Sony in Europe and North America, where the iPod has achieved iconic status and a big selling point is the availability of iTunes, an easy-to-use music downloading service that has not yet been launched in Japan." Apple continues to lead the market with its hard-drive based iPods, according to the report; however, "there has been a decisive momentum swing in the Japanese market, with Sony securing the top position for memory-type players in both May and June, knocking Apple and its iPod shuffle device into second place."

by MacNN Staff