Microsoft's portable...

[Paco]

I agree but time and again (in the handheld market) anything that's not Nintendo has been destroyed, unable to find a niche like the GC did. The last time Nintendo had a real competitor in that market was the GameGear and now the PSP and I see the same outcome. Sega could not float the GG on first party titles alone and every third party wanted to be on the GB wagon.

In the videogame handheld market, yes. Nintendo doesn't even touch the MP3 player market, and this is where Microsoft should go (and forego games for the time being until they establish a brand).

You're kidding yourself if you think PSP is going anywhere but up.

I'm not saying it's impossible that the PSP isn't going to find a niche but looking at right now it seems more likely that Sony will reinvent their marketing to make the PSP the must-have executive toy (instead of the 'hip' teenage accesory). If they dont go that route, and the price doesn't come to a respectable 'below 200' mark, they're going to realize just like sega with the GG that trying to float it to keep its small market share would be time and money better spent on its home console devision (though Sega's a bad example here :D).

As far as those numbers you found all i can say is wow. They make no sense though and they're coming from corporate which as we know in any case is always inflated regardless. But to go from 15 million to almost 50 million in ONE YEAR? When the reports say that around 20 million were manufactured through that year (most delivered to its fiscal end)?? So the ipods are all sold out now? How does that make sense? And how does the same time frame equal two different numbers that are vastly different? are those sales worldwide and sales through the website itself? But it says that in other countries the Creative Labs MP3 players are more dominate in the market, so that means the 50 million users are all American? 50 million Americans have ipods?? the HELL?

Errr...the numbers showed were for the total installed base of iPod, and I believe that includes all the iterations (nano, shuffle, and the four generations of the original). What's surprising in those numbers is how the sales are climbing so fast. The numbers are from Wikipedia, btw.

I know a pretty good amount of people from all over the country either that I met on films or over the internet and I only know 2 of them to have an ipod, i simply cannot grasp how almost 50 million people have an ipod, that just doesn't make sense. Apple could not have manufactured AND SOLD that many ipods in the time span its been available and by the records you posted it says it grew it's production to nearly 3 times and was able to manufacture 20 million of them in one year (which I also dont buy, that's an insane amount, not even the Chinese motorcycle factories can pop that many out in a year and their houses are gargantuan) and it just seems like wishful thinking.

I'm still in college (with around 28,000 students) and I can say that about every third or fourth person I see has a MP3 player. I see them in class, walking to class, at the recreation center, on the track, in the stores...they are very popular. iPod, of course, is the one I see the most of.

Now this would all make sense if Apple is saying that over the entire span of the ipod, they have manufactured 50 million units (it's coming up on 3 years now since it was released, that's 20M from this year alone based on their records and 30M from the other two years) for a world-wide market but has encountered problems with breaking in to other countries because of the dominance of other brands (flash) and that in the United States the ipod has a user base of around 20 to 25 (possibly more) million people which would make more sense but is still hard to swallow.

Why is that hard to believe?

But I simply cannot believe those numbers at face value for a second, it sounds like magic math to me, like when people say the PSP has over 20 million users, etc.

Impossible for their to be 20 million PSP users when Sony released a statement just a couple months ago that they had shipped 10 million. I'm guessing the installed user base is between 7-9 million by now.

Also, for the love of God dont do the 'I stopped reading your post' krap. All that's going to do is make conversation limited and frustrating as with the 'you're an idiot nintendo fan' etc etc, no one is name calling and bashing in this thread except for you so if you want more conversation and less BS calm the fuck down.

I saw that your first two paragraphs were grossly misinformed and I assumed that the rest of your post was just as much rubbish. I'm still not going to read it.

Here's some figures and sales reports to stew on...

The IDC released a marketing report for the portable music players to boom through 2009. The consumer market report is based on AUdio at IDC.

In addition to having DVD players, mobile phone devices and gaming devices that play back audio, compressed audio will be the key drivers of the player market during the forecast period.

The report divides the portable music player market into four groups: MP3 capable disc players, flash MP3 players, hard drive MP3 players, and an "other" category. Interestingly, the other category, which includes handheld games and cellphones, will be by far the largest by 2009, with some 700 million units and revenue of US$114 billion. The total market, including dedicated music players, will be some 945.5 million units and US$145.4 billion.

Don't count Apple Computer out yet, though. The number of flash based hardware devices, like the iPod Nano, is expected to number some 124 million units by 2009, up from 26.4 million in 2004. Also, the maximum flash capacity for such devices is expected to rise to 8GB in 2006, and 16GB by late 2007. Hard drive based units are expected to see a compound annual growth rate of 21.5 percent.

Finally, demand for video playback and the ability to download video is expected to drive sales of both flash and hard drive based players.

Link

Even though MP3 players have been around for quite some time, the sales figures still haven’t reached their peak. It is safe to say that the market penetration of MP3-able products has been steady but slow. But now it seems that digitally compressed, and possibly digitally distributed or shared, music is an acceptable media and the consumers are realizing its full potential.
[indent]Headset CD/MP3 player sales continue to rise in the triple digits, which helps push the audio category as well. In June, unit sales were up 202 percent, compared to the same period in 2002, to total sales of 547,000 units and dollar sales were up 104 percent to a total of $27 million.
...
"The growth in MP3 has been monumental in 2003, with it clearly being a purchase criteria for consumers seeking on the go audio," said Sean Wargo, director of industry analysis. "The great news is that this trend has only just begun, now that the format is moving into the mainstream with the new profit based online music services."[/indent]

Link

2003 news, but the upward trend is the same today.

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Global sales of portable digital music players are expected to rise significantly this year, the world's second-largest manufacturer of MP3 players said on Tuesday.

"This market is booming rapidly and one of the reasons why MP3s are so popular is that they are becoming cheaper," said Tommy Tsai, a product marketing manager at Creative Technology Ltd.'s Taiwan branch.

Tsai, citing estimates from market research firm IDC, told a seminar in Taipei that Creative and its rivals, including South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and U.S.-based Apple Computer Inc., would collectively sell 35 million portable flash MP3 players in 2005, compared with 25 million in 2004.

Apple is the leader in the mini hard disk-drive (HDD) music player market, with a roughly 60 to 70 percent share, following the success of its market-leading iPod, which can store tens of thousands of songs, compared with hundreds for regular MP3 players.

But Samsung and Creative together hold 13 percent of the global market share in the fast-growing segment that uses flash memory chips, Tsai said.

Singapore-based Creative estimated last week that revenue in the last quarter had risen 45 percent from a year earlier. Tsai gave no 2005 sales or output estimates for the company.

Link

Abstract: Arlington, Va.— Portable MP3 players — Apple's iPods in particular — are keeping the audio industry going in 2005, CEA statistics show. Factory-level portable audio sales grew at double-digit percentage rates during the first four months of the year, offsetting a sharp decline in home and car audio sales to push up industry sales through April by 17

The more significant partner for Apple turned out to be the world's largest discount retailer, Wal-Mart, which analysts credited with helping iPod sales reach a record 6.2 million in its most recent quarter, worth more than $1.1 billion in revenue.

[url=http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/12263565.htm]Link

I hope there are enough non-Apple sources to convince you that there certainly is a MP3 player market and it's growing. It makes those Apple numbers all the more real, too.

What's so hard to believe about all this? Is it the fact that there is another handheld market that is doing really well (very well) and has nothing to do with Nintendo?