Guess which portable music player finally outsold the iPod in Japan for the first time in four years? If you read the headline of this post and guessed “The Sony Walkman,” then you, my friend, are correct.
“The Japanese company’s share of portable music players sold climbed to 43 percent in the week ended Aug. 30, exceeding Apple’s 42.1 percent, ending the lead that the iPod maker had kept since January 2005, the Tokyo-based researcher [BCN, Inc.] said in a statement yesterday. The iPhone also cannibalized iPod sales, according to BCN, which didn’t count the iPhone in the survey because the product is also a wireless handset.”
So the iPhone cannibalizes iPod sales, yet isn’t included in the figures. O-kaaaay. In related news, I outsold all Apple products here in the US by selling a pair of pants on eBay last week. Granted, we’re not counting any Apple products as pants.
I think upcoming iPod Touch & iPod Nano will grab a huge pie everywhere with 3.2 MP camera.and iPod touch is like a mini computer,if they include GPS & Camera in that,then it is just perfect for everyone.
why would anyone be interested in an iPod that takes lousy pictures? my good old Viewty already takes 5 MP pictures, why would I need another device that takes worse pictures?
if you still thinks a higher pixel count gets better picture then you really should lurk moar.
I just had to click this and comment because braveheart fucking rules.
FREEDOM!!!!
Agreed.
Braveheart rocks.
Well, for years Apple has asserted their “dominance” of the ‘dedicated music player’ market, specifically by excluding phones, handheld game systems, PDAs and anything else people might use to play music, so why shouldn’t Sony be able to use the same criteria when making the same claim?
I mean, if you want to go back and change the definitions, then Nokia has ALWAYS beat Apple in the ‘portable music player’ market.
Since when did those nokia fones, handheld GAME systems, PDAs became ‘dedicated music player’??
iPod has always been a dedicated music player, just that now it does other things too, but still music comes first.
How do I explain this without sounding patronizing?
For years before the iPhone came out, Apple relentlessly advertised their “dominance” of a category they just made up, called the “dedicated music player” market. They did this because, if you factored out multifunction devices that could also play music, like phones, game systems and PDAs, it was easier to post remarkable market share numbers. They stopped doing that as soon as they released the iPhone, and the iPod line turned into a PDA. No tech journalist ever questioned the efficacy of separating out dedicated music players from multifunction handheld devices back when Apple did it, they just wrote stories about how nothing could touch the iPod.
Now Sony is using the exact same trick, but instead of just accepting the numbers, as they did when Apple did it, they instead have to question whether it is fair to ignore the iPhone, and suggest Sony’s claim is bogus. I am just saying that if they now suddenly feel that it isn’t valid to separate dedicated music players from multifunction devices, then why don’t they go back and see if the iPod has really been “dominating” the market all these years, relative to something like Nokia phones that play music, or handheld game systems that play music.
I don’t see the issue with not including the iPhone. They didn’t include Walkman phones.