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Digital Music Players:
iPod leads the pack of music players - Sony and others not giving up
by JMR's Consumer Preference Research Team
Apple's "iPod' name is now synonymous with digital music player. Since its introduction in November 2001, with the iPod's style and design, complemented by the iTunes software system that automates finding, downloading, and listings of consumers' favorite tunes, it has revolutionized the field of portable music. A steam of model variations and goods from Apple has allowed it to maintain its overwhelming dominance in the consumers mind.
Here is JMR's look at 25 of the top digital music players used by Japanese consumers. An all-Japan representative sample of consumers, ages 20 to 69, were asked to rank their favorite players.
Apple's iPod products held the top 4 positions in consumer minds in this survey. The top four in order of preference were -- iPod (with internal HD drive), iPod Mini, iPod Shuffle, and the iPod Nano. Consumer recognition for all four devices exceed 60%. Next ranked manufacturer Sony's Walkman series of device's top offering, the A series, only got the nod from 36% of those polled, some 30 points behind the leader. When asked about devices that consumers heard about from friends or in the media, the iPod Nano rate tops with 18.7%.
For devices currently owned and most used by consumers, the iPod Nano again came in first. Consumers were found to frequently own multiple portable devices. Turning to the future purchases that consumers were planning, the survey found, not surprisingly, that the Nano again was at the head of the list.
The Nano is the successor to the iPod Mini which is now no longer sold in Japan. The difference between the devices is that the Nano uses lighter, smaller flash memory instead of the HD drive used in the Mini. The Shuffle does away with the LCD display to fill the role of the smallest device in the iPod line up. At the end 2006, market watchers were guessing that Apple would take on these two devices and outfit it as a video player. (That event came into reality in early 2007, after the current survey results were collected.)
On the other hand, the iPod's closest rival, Sony Walkman series, is likely to have a hard time in overtaking Apple's leadership position. With name recognition value and brand impact, Apple continues to add new products to the iPod line up; this has left rival Sony to struggle to find a course of action that would help it regain leadership. To use a metaphor from sumo wrestling, it would seem to take supernatural powers on the part of Sony to prevent it from being herded into a corner and tossed from the sumo ring by grand champion Apple.
