The NDP group reports that save for the Apple iPod, US sales of media players showed considerable decline between November 18 and December 9. Dollar sales of mp3 players during this period were down 16% (compared to the same period last year) while unit sales declined 9%. NPD believes that this is due to the fact that there are fewer first-time buyers in the market today. Most people who want an mp3 player already have one, and they also don’t have enough media files to need a device with over 80 gigs of storage. Consumers, therefore, choose to buy cheaper flash-based players with small memory.
This bit of news actually has a pretty good point; a good number my friends say they’re happy with media players that have 2 or 4 gigs of storage and aren’t willing to spend more for gadgets that can practically function as an external hard drive. I myself have got my eye on the iPod classic for Christmas because I love how idiot-proof the iPod’s interface is. And with the ridiculous amount of music and movies I have, I’d use up that 160GB in no time. I wonder if the figures hold true for countries other than the US?
[via after dawn]
December 24th, 2007 at 4:21 am
Yes, it is a world-wide fad…. Mp3/Mp4 players were so popular in Hong Kong like 2 years ago… now they are not…
I think we saw a decline in china pmp’s this year due to the fact that so many had fake memory (on ebay, etc)….
I think the consumer is definitely more educated and know that 80gb from apple or archos is like impossible to use and the players are bulky….
2gb = 500 songs, 4gb = 1000 songs… that is a enuff to last a while…
December 24th, 2007 at 4:44 am
Hey Thomas, tell me more about the fake memory. I hope it’s as innocent as having one gig of storage instead of two as advertised. Not that that isn’t enough to rile me up, but these MP4 players are so cheap you don’t really mind.
December 24th, 2007 at 6:25 am
Yes, that is basically the scam. Right now the price of 256mb-1gb is all around the same (256mb and 512mb have officially been retired, finally). But before, people would advertise the 8gb Nano II’s and sell them for the 1gb price. Customers ended up getting only 256mb… Now that sucks….
I think most people know to expect a 8gb MP4 @ $30 to not really have 8gb… but still, a lot of people got burned…
Any serious seller will clearly list the amount of songs a player can use in their description …. i.e. 8gb Mp4 Nano II (only slim, non-PMP model that supports 8gb) can hold 2000 songs.
Fake memory i.e. Hacked memory players have gone down due to the fact that 256mb is virtually the same price as the 1gb players… another way to check if a player is hacked is to reformat it… Here is a link:
Note that after reformatting, 4gb player should still have around 3.86gb … if it doesn’t good chances you got hacked memory… for those who want to check players or reformat a player with “error message” try this: http://www.chinagrabber.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1331
On a different note: How much money would one have to spend on iTunes DRM before they filled up 80gb, 160gb worth of music / videos?
December 24th, 2007 at 8:16 am
Merry Christmas Thomas, and to all of you at the 8 GMT.
December 25th, 2007 at 10:24 am
thanks, Merry Christmas to you and PMPtoday!