e.Digital Corporation (fka EDIG)

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Worth a repost:

26 Million Portable Compressed-Audio Players To Ship By '05 - Study.(Industry Trend or Event)
Author/s: Michael Bartlett
Issue: March 30, 2001

Demand for portable compressed-audio players is expected to grow at a rapid pace in the next few years, according to a new study released today.

IDC, a company that analyzes technology markets, predicts the market for portable music players capable of playing MP3s and other compressed digital music formats will expand by 51 percent per year, from 3.3 million units in 2000 to nearly 26 million in 2005.

Shipments in the US will account for nearly 70 percent of the total, the study said. The US market will increase from 2.8 million in 2000 to 18 million in 2005.

Bryan Ma, senior analyst for IDC's consumer devices program, said the key to increasing sales outside the US is to increase the proliferation of personal computers.

"PCs and portable music players are interoperable with each other," Ma said. "Whether consumers are ripping CDs or downloading music from the Internet, the process is dependent on PCs. In geographic regions where PC penetration is not high, that eliminates a substantial portion of the market."

The importance of the PC to the compressed audio player market is the reason why several computer companies - including Intel, Compaq, Dell and Gateway - have entered the fray in recent months, Ma added. "They are basically extending the PC environment," he said.

Functionality will be more important than price in driving market growth, according to Ma.

"Today's compressed audio players can hold about an hour of music. In the next couple of years, consumers will see devices that can hold 10 hours of music, and in come cases, someone's entire music collection," he said.

Ma predicted the price of these audio players will drop as manufacturers continue to develop alternatives to expensive flash memory. "We expect a proliferation of devices based on alternative media, including hard drives, burned CDs and new storage formats such as DataPlay," he said.

More information on IDC is available on the Web at http://www.idc.com .

Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com