Andre Yoskowitz
22 Dec 2007 18:59
According to the NPD Group, during the first three weeks of the holiday shopping season, US sales of portable media players, with the exception of the Apple iPod, were down by a considerable margin.
For sales between November 18th and December 9th, dollar sales were down 16% compared to the same period last year while units sales dropped 9%.
NPD believes the declines are due to the fact that manufacturers faced a market with fewer first-time buyers. "The market is in a position where most of the people who want an MP3 player have one," NPD analyst Stephen Baker said.
Even the clear market leader, the iPod, was not selling the way it was in the past. "The iPod is not exactly a blistering growth segment," Baker said. "It's a good segment, and you'll still make money on it, but it's not growing 75% a year."
Revenues for media players have dropped in the recent past because more and more consumers are choosing to purchase cheaper, small capacity flash based players. "Most people don't have enough music and video files to justify paying more for a device with 80-plus gigabytes of storage," Baker added.
Source:
Yahoo