Now That’s Market Dominance

October 27th, 2004

Filed under:
Technology

Now That’s Market Dominance

Via AlwaysOn, I read tonight that Apple’s iPod owns 92% (registration required) of the ‘high-capacity music player’ market. They’ve truly decimated the competition, and done so with great technology (marketing spin on the new colour iPod notwithstanding). If I hadn’t tried out a craptacular Lyra MP3 player from RCA (it’s not even listed in their product section anymore–are they ashamed?), I’d probably never have seen another high-capacity music player. Walking around the city, I only ever see iPods (or their telltale white headphones).

Comments: 5 Responses so far

Richard
October 27th, 2004
10:14 pm

But do they dominate the portable player market? If you ride the bus from the suburbs, you’ll probably see a lot more non-iPods (e.g. tiny MP3 players, CD players, etc) than “telltale white headphones”.

Rog
October 27th, 2004
10:36 pm

I’m sorry, but that just seems like such a small segment of a bigger market.

I mean, they don’t have 92% of music players. They don’t even have 92% of digital music players. Nope, it’s “high capacity” music players.

I wonder how much of the market that is overall, but I somehow suspect that they’re dwarfed by the likes of Panasonic and it wouldn’t surprise me if they don’t even match the number of MP3-playing CD players that Koss pumps out.

Sometimes spin sure seems like just spin.

Darren
October 27th, 2004
11:00 pm

Good points. Personally, I probably still see as many CD players as MP3 players. I have no sense of the relative markets (and revenue) of high-capacity vs. low-capacity players. Obviously, you’d probably need to sell three of the latter for every one of the former, all other factors being equal.