More of my sites

WinInfo Daily News
SuperSite for Windows
Windows IT Pro Magazine
Connected Home
Thurrott Dot Com
Windows Weekly at TWIT

About this site

For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Demise of a Darling: iPod market share crashes to 14% amid management denials

Communities Dominate Brands:

The whole MP3 player market worldwide for the second quarter of 2006 is not 10 million units, from which Apple could claim four out of five units. In reality the MP3 player market is about 56 million units (48 million MP3 playing musicphones, 8 million iPods, and 2 million non-Apple brand stand-alone MP3 players). So Apple's quarterly market share is not 77% like it was back in 2004 before musicphones. In this quarter Apple's market share is 14%.

As we forecast in our book and on this blogsite, at the end of last year the battle for MP3 players shifted and is now fought in the pocket. And the undefeated world champion in that market share war is the mobile phone.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Apple community will react to this article as if it were the insane ramblings of a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. There's some justification for that. But. There's also some justification in believing that there's a point being made here. Cell phones, almost certainly, will surpass dedicated MP3 players (as they have cameras and PDAs). Has it already happened?

[ Posted at 6:10 PM | Permalink ]