08/17/2006, 12:10pm, EDT

Thursday, August 17th

Apple maintains dominance with iPod

Apple continues to lead the U.S. digital music player market in the second quarter of 2006 with 75.6 percent share, according to a recent study by the NPD Group. "Apple has done a great job of focusing consumers' attention on digital music in their products through millions of dollars in advertising," said Ross Rubin, an NPD analyst. Mobile phone companies may eat away at Apple's sizable lead, however, as they continue to unveil new phones with built-in music playing capability, according to ITworld.com. SanDisk achieved 9.7 percent market share taking second place below Apple, while Creative holds third place with 4.3 percent of the digital music player market. Samsung obtained 2.5 percent of the market, and Sony managed to take 1.9 percent.

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Other story tags: digital music/video

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phillymjs

Ha!

08/17, 1:50pm, EDT

Boy, Creative's $100M marketing blitz really paid off. Forget about beating the iPod, they can't even beat "other"! :-)

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edac2

Should Cell Phones Count?

08/17, 2:04pm, EDT

If all cell phones eventually come with built-in MP3 players, as they now do with cameras, does this really count as iPod competition? Not everyone will use the music feature, or even know how to get songs onto their phones.

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MichaelNH

Why try?

08/17, 2:47pm, EDT

The dumb argument of "the ipod doesn't have FM tuner, FM recorder, etc".... is one reason I think it does so well..... if you put too many features into something, it becomes less user friendly. I've tried playing with the "other" brand mp3 players, and it's nuts trying to get through all the "features"... I like it simple..... an MP3 player that play mp3's, what a concept.

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PookJP

Yeah...

08/17, 7:32pm, EDT

It's clearly the lack of an FM tuner that has made the iPod such a resounding success. The design, UI, integration with iTunes, size, and price points are all secondary to that missing tuner.

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rok

fm tuner...

08/17, 7:59pm, EDT

um, well, apple DID capitulate somewhat to that crowd by releasing their own fm tuner. wasn't that at a macworld expo? or paris? maybe last year's wwdc? either way, steve demo'd it on stage so it was one of those three.

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mgpalma

Yeah, so much for people

08/17, 8:23pm, EDT

loosing interest in the iPod like so many tech pundits predict. The demand seems consistent to me...

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MichaelNH

FM tuner.... exactly...

08/17, 10:52pm, EDT

Yes they released the external tuner to make people happy. I would imagine that if they sold 1 or 2 FM tuners for every 4 iPod's sold, it could be a sign that people want it built it... but I'm doubting those odds... so a good way to test for demand I suppose.

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rubaiyat

Improvement or not?

08/20, 10:56am, EDT

The one big question I have which wasn't answered by the article is:

Is this a greater or lesser market share than the last recorded sales figures?

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DoctorGonzo

An important point

08/21, 2:39pm, EDT

An iPod purchase almost certainly signifies that the customer intends to use the device for music playback. A customer purchasing a cell phone that has MP3 playback abilities does not indicate any such thing, as the primary use of the device is overwhelmingly not related to listening to music and may never be used for such functions.

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