Though the tech market is slow, Apple may sell a lot more iPods in the months ahead. More than half of almost 2,000 Net-savvy Americans ages 15 to 35 say they plan to purchase a digital music device over the next year, according to a new study conducted by Harris Interactive for Sony Electronics.
This is a up from the approximate 21 percent of the U.S. population ages 15 to 35 with Internet access that currently own at least one digital portable audio product. The “Your Musical Taste” also showed that 64 percent of the online population aged 15 to 35 know how to “rip” play lists from their CDs. Of those, 60 percent do it up to three times each month.
The Harris Interactive study also showed that the enjoyment of downloading comes from being able to customize music collections (according to 83 percent of respondents), the ability to choose from a large selection of songs (76 percent), and its simplicity (61 percent).
With 21 percent of online consumers currently owning at least one such device and 54 percent planning to buy one by the end of 2003, knowledge on how to transfer music to portable devices and the demand for music on the go will steadily increase, positively affecting the market for these products, according to Robert Ashcroft, senior vice president of Sony Electronics’ Personal and Mobile Products Division.