Sales Of Mobile Music Players Set To Double In 2004

The Future Of Portable Music report, from Informa Media says consumers worldwide will double the number of players bought during 2004 and sales will continue to rise at an annual rate of 45% over the next six years, propelling a spending boom in music players not seen since the launch of the Sony Walkman. Informa predicts that by 2010, more than 194 million units will have been sold.

According to the report, which says the craze is being driven by the success of Apple’s iPod, people will opt for storing music on hard-drive players rather than using removable media such as CDs and cassettes. It also says that as people become more familiar with managing the storage of their music collection, which can hold thousands of songs, the number of tracks held on an individual player is likely to grow, meaning portable MP3s will play an even greater role in the future.

Consumers can transfer songs from their own CD collection or download tracks from the web however one of the few factors that could dent the booming music gadget industry is incompatibility between tracks downloaded from the internet and the portable player.

Simon Dyson, report author said: “As legal downloading is in an early stage of development, incompatibility with some portable players is not an issue. However, if recent forecasts for digital sales growth are accurate, incompatibility between some downloads and the most popular portable players could become an issue in the very near future.”

The new predictions might come as worrying news for radio executives attempting to launch digital stations. Earlier this month Ofcom’s head of market intelligence, Peter Davies, revealed a challenge to digital radio from personal music players, recommending that broadcasters and manufacturers redouble efforts to make the medium more attractive to all-important young early adopters.