Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPod Family, Apple
Gimme a break: iPod marketshare "14%"?
Paul Thurrott, in his constant quest to belittle Apple and its followers, links to an article by a group called "Communities Dominate Brands" regarding iPod and its marketshare in the MP3 Player World. I won't get too deep into it, but the gist of the article can be summed up in a few sentences: "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)," they write. "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%"While I'm not going to "react to this article as if it were the insane ramblings of a 9/11 conspiracy theorist," as Thurrott predicts, I will ask some very valid questions: How many of those 48 million actually use the MP3 player functionality of their phone aside from ringtones? Maybe 1%? And how many of those 48 million own and use an iPod as their main MP3 player? Do you see anyone walking around listening to their phone instead of their iPod? Nnno.
I have friends who own phones that can act as MP3 players, but none of them use it as such. They all use iPods instead -- and I think that trend is pretty global.
What say you, ye members of the Mac Elite: is the iPod being marginalized by the insurgence of MP3-playin' cells, or will the one-purpose device live on, putting to shame the limited and tedious functionality of the swiss-army port-o-phones? Is Apple's only salvation the future iPhone?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Hjalti said 9:09PM on 7-20-2006
I own a Windows Mobile phone and i can buy quite big SD Cards for it (currently have 512mb) but I've never even tried using it to listen to music. I love my ipod and don't see myself using Windows Media Palyer on the phone, it's just slow and badly designed.
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tim said 9:21PM on 7-20-2006
I also have an MP3 playing phone, but would never use it for that purpose. Storage is too limited, the MP3 functions are poorly implemented, and transferring songs to it is a pain. But honestly, I'd love to see a device that could handle all the functions of my iPod and phone in one. I hate listening to my iPod and having to shuffle around while I pause it, pull my phone out of my pocket, yank out one of my ear buds, flip the phone open and raise it to my ear all at the same time.
I have complete faith that Apple could implement all the features of an iPod and a phone into one. At that point I'll consider using my phone as an MP3 player, but until then... I'm good.
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Sam Johnson said 9:22PM on 7-20-2006
Paul is an idiot. then a computer is an MP3 player and their market share is .02% ...lame... i have an mp3 phone and yes i do use it as suchbut only when my other freinds try to tell me they have better ringtones. i say that i have whole freaking songs.
cheers
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Chris S said 9:31PM on 7-20-2006
I agree. We have atleast 5 mp3 capable phones in our household - but none of us actually use them for that.
iPods all the way.
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yonatron said 9:32PM on 7-20-2006
By now, somebody has probably seen me walking down the street rockin' out to music on my phone, and I don't own an iPod. I've also never owned a computer that wasn't made by Apple, lest you think I'm an anti-Apple zealot.
Not that an anecdote is data, but you're the one who made the hyperbolic statement that you don't see anyone using a phone as a music player.
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Ken said 9:32PM on 7-20-2006
It all depends on what you decide to compare the iPod to (and why).
If you decide to sum up all MP3 playing devices, you should add:
COMPUTERS!!! (notebooks, portables and even desktops)
Cell phones
Car MP3 players
PDAs
Gaming devices that happen to play music, too
etc...
Some people may prefer an all-in-one solution as a cell phone, that takes pictures and plays music and makes breakfast and places calls. And these are potential clients that Apple (and other MP3 player companies) have lost.
But it's hard to count those who actually use a cell phone as a music device, or those who picked a cell phone according to its music capabilities.
The comparison gets even harder as new iPods emerge. What will you compare a video iPod to? a portable DVD? a PDA?
Reading numbers is an old trick and you have to be very covincing to not be taken as a clown.
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Buthidae said 9:33PM on 7-20-2006
I carry my MP3 capable phone in my pocket, right next to my iPod nano. I've used the music functions on my phone once, and I hope never to use them again
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Ron Martinez said 9:35PM on 7-20-2006
M. Thurrott, who I've never heard of before, sounds like a garden variety a pundit/troll: one who makes incendiary statements to get attention and therefore traffic, notoriety, sell books, consulting, whatever. In the political world, the reigning champ is Ann Coulter. It's generally not worth arguing the merits of the point, because the punditroll is being disingenuous in making it.
But if we must expend mental energy on this poppycock, note that by the measure of "music players," Apple probably has an 0.02% share, since home stereos, car radios, televisions, computers, and other devices all play music. This is a shocking fact that Apple obviously wants to keep from others who might want to further redefine the measurement criteria to "electronic devices," or "things made by humans." Apple's share in those cases would be shockingly small.
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Tobias Butler said 9:37PM on 7-20-2006
This article is like including camera phone sales with camera sales.
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Nick said 9:42PM on 7-20-2006
Mr. Thurrott made one not-so-minor error: Apple claims 75% *US* market share, not 75% global share.
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Reg said 9:43PM on 7-20-2006
I'm sure if you massaged the numbers enough, you could make it look like iPod was only 0.0014%, given that every cash register, bank ATM, car assembling robot is a PC and hence a music playing device.
But we shouldn't come down too heavily on Thurrott, aka Dvorak Jnr, after all he did call Vista a "train wreck!"
And on a serious note, in Apple's 2006 Q3 recent conference call, the CFO did acknowledge that the cellphone possibility was a serious threat.
Personally though, even though I have a very powerful phone with a 1GB MiniSD card, and I'm smart enough to figure out how to use the portal music player it came with, there simply isn't enough space on it to make it useful.
My 60GB iPod is crammed with music, podcasts and video. My phone has a bunch of contacts.
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adriana said 9:45PM on 7-20-2006
I use my phones MP3 player occasionaly. When im taking that five min walk to the laundromat to drop off my clothes and thats it. Phones don't hold that many songs. I also use my mac to make phone calls via skype but does that mean that its my main phone? I surf the net via my phone sometimes aswell, does it make it my main computer. this guy is an idiot.
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Jim of Davao said 9:46PM on 7-20-2006
"Demise of a Darling" is ridiculously long and inane. Not worth reading. What's worth reading are the comments. The "author" said he will "post an update/response blog entry and address each" of the commenters.
Then the comment after this says:
"Don't bother."
Priceless.
It's worth noting that the writer is a mobile phone consultant.
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Pixelbender said 9:50PM on 7-20-2006
Here is a list of common complaints:
Everyone: My phone's battery doesn't last long enough.
Winblow Fanbois: The iPods battery dies too fast.
PSP aftermarket battery maker: The PSP was developed by Sony with a puny battery.
SOOOOO.....
Until battery tech catches up, you're not going to see a succesful all in one device. I know I don't want one.
Jack of all trades, master of none.
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Daniel Brauer said 9:51PM on 7-20-2006
Thurrot's an idiot and everyone would be better off if his ramblings were not mentioned outside his site.
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NL said 9:58PM on 7-20-2006
I don't have an mp3-ready phone and I'm not keen on getting one. Why drain my cell phone's battery listening to music??? I need my phone to work, sometimes for long periods of time and I'd rather drain the purely-for-music device (my iPod nano) than the possibly life-saving phone. What I looked for when buying my most recent cell phone was looks, screen size, and international compatibility.
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tom Ligman said 9:59PM on 7-20-2006
I use my windows mobile 5 smartphone to play podcasts because I was tired of my 2nd gen mini's battery thing not working well. It would report a dead battery after 20 minutes, die, and then I'd turn it back on after an hour or so. I miss my ipod, but until I can justify the expense of new one, I'm sticking w/ the smartphone.
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blackout said 10:04PM on 7-20-2006
theres a new ipod out?
i've never heard of the Nnno
christ, i want one :]
spell check
try firefox 2.0 for that.
but otherwise.
just check it.
you've had a lot of errors, and if you want i would go through them for you before you post.
but please dont ruin such a good website with bad spelling
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Dan Pourhadi said 10:09PM on 7-20-2006
Hey blackout, it's not a typo. I asked a question, and responded with an elongated "nnno" -- a form of onomatopoeia, essentially. How the heck would "nano" even work in the context of the paragraph? If you want to talk about errors, perhaps you should work on your capitalization and punctuation -- and actually read the post. I think the last thing I'd want to do is turn to you for proofreading.
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Sherrod said 10:16PM on 7-20-2006
I'm actually glad to comment on this one. We all know the iPod dominates all of the USA in both stats and for real. Now, I'm from Virginia, but I'm studying in Japan. I have friends in Japan, and they tell me Apple is not big over here at all, so I'm expecting everyone listening to music on their phone, and not an iPod in sight. WRONG!! I'm in Tokyo, and take the train across Tokyo every day, which means I must see over a thousand people, almost all of them listening to music. Out of all those people, I saw an astonishing number of iPods. Like, sitting on a seat in the subway, the people I could see were: Walkman, Walkman, iPod, phone, iPod, iPod, iPod, phone, phone, iPod, Off-brand, iPod. While the iPod doesn't quite reign supreme here like it does in the US, I'm gonna say it's the majority. Also if interest is that the young AND the old are packin' iHeat. And some of them are 3rd gens still! So, in conclusion, Mr. Thurrott, please let us know when you're ready to come out from under the rock you've been living under from some time, we're all waiting for ya.
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