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