If you track our news section, you know that Apple announced fourth quarter financial results that clearly demonstrate the iPod’s domination of the personal digital player market. And by domination I don’t mean that Apple simply has a comfortable lead over the competition, I mean that, for the most part, there is no competition.
According to research firm, NPD Group, the iPod accounts for 92.1 percent of all hard drive-based music players with Creative Technology (makers of the MuVo and Zen players) and Digital Networks (the Rio people) gathering up the crumbs of the market with a 3.7- and 3.2 percent share respectively.
In the last quarter, Apple sold 2,016,000 iPods, which amounts to $537 million in revenue (or 23 percent of the company’s total revenue). This is a 500 percent increase in iPod sales from this same quarter last year and a 134 percent increase over the last quarter.
Can I get a Good God! from the congregation?
I said, can I have a Great Googly Moogly! from the brothers and sisters!?
Hallelujah indeed.
At this point in the proceedings I understand that I’m supposed to hint at ominous things coming — big players such as Microsoft and Virgin are getting into the music store business, a number of Asian companies are creating some very attractive players that offer features more compelling than those found on the iPod and, like the Boston Red Sox, Apple is cursed and bound to find some way to screw this up.
While all those things may be true, let’s glance back at those figures one more time:
92.1 percent of hard drive-based music players. 2,016,000 iPods sold in a three month period. 500 percent increase in sales from a year ago.
Given these numbers, how many of you would care to be any other company’s Scott McClellan and, with a straight face, tell the world that your digital music efforts are going great guns?
Yeah, me neither.
So kudos to Apple and best of luck to the competition.
They’re going to need it.