MP3 Player Market Doubling as Apple Dominates

The digital music player market is expected to double in size by the end of the decade, research firm In-Stat said in a report released Monday. Shipments of players will jump from 140 million units last year to 286 million units by 2010.

Spearheading the rapid growth will be falling price points, growth in both the pay-per-download and subscription online music stores, enhanced functionality, and increasing flash memory capacities.

The market for flash players is especially strong. The small chips have allowed for equally small players, most notably Apple's iPod Nano and Shuffle, as well as other players from Creative, iRiver and Sony.

Falling prices for the chips have also allowed manufacturers to offer the players at deeply discounted prices. In-Stat reported that in some Asian markets, the cheapest players were priced at $25. However, even with such discounts, Apple still leads the pack.

"Apple continues to dominate the market for MP3 players, particularly in the US," In-Stat analyst Stephanie Guza said. "Apple competitors continue to face significant challenges, such as a constrained Flash memory supply, device and software integration, and the 'cool factor' associated with Apple's iPod line of products."

The study also found that Microsoft's overall dominance of the entire industry is just about gone. 49 percent of all players in existence now carry the Apple brand. The point that more Microsoft-based players have been sold overall has long been a talking point in arguments for those favoring the Redmond company's digital music efforts.

In-Stat said that on hard drive based players, the focus would turn to a multimedia device as faster processors and bigger disk drives are able to power audio, video and image playback functions.