Unit shipments of MP3s will rise to 57.7m in 2005, up 57% from 36.8m in 2004 according to iSuppli. Apple demonstrated the dominance of HDD-based players over Flash-based players as they can hold much more data. Apple's iPods can hold thousands of songs, hours and hours worth of playback. Of course this expected growth is good for Apple, but it is likely we will see more tech companies working to beat the iPod and take a bigger chunk out of the market.
Sony has already challenged the success of the iPod but only so far with flash memory based players that it hopes will dethrone the iPod Shuffle. The new Sony devices have one major advantage over the iPod Shuffle; they have a display, which the iPod shuffle does not. Sony also has said it will release a device later this year it is confident can knock the iPod off the top spot.
Source:
PC Pro
Written by: James Delahunty @ 16 Mar 2005 2:45