Trend

Tune in to the MP3 player market

The MP3 player market is maturing with new designs and features being constantly developed by manufacturers to cash in on the boom, but it is set to feel the heat from cell phones that support music downloads, reports Vinita Gupta

We Indians are music lovers and many urban households in the country have at least one MP3 player, if not more. With prices coming down due to lower cost of storage, the MP3 player market is growing exponentially. As per IDC estimates, in India the market for MP3 players witnessed a growth of 116% in 2007, and the demand will continue to surge to 73,34,000 units by 2010, at a CAGR of 77%.

While the primary application is to listen to one’s favorite music, other applications like MPEG 4 movie or picture viewing and voice recording are also catching up. In the bigger cities there are brand preferences, whereas in smaller towns this may not be the case.

Favorite features

Today’s MP3 players are more advanced than one would imagine from what the scene was just a few years ago. MP3 players now come with many handy features, including video playback, audio playback, photo viewer, radio, FM recording, voice recording, direct line-in recording, stop watch, watch, external storage, etc. Adding to these is the plethora of designs, accessories and colors available to go with one’s clothing and lifestyle.

Irfan Kazi, Associate Marketing Manager, India, Creative Technology, said, “Radio is definitely one of the preferred options that a user would desire in an MP3 player. A few of Creative’s models, in fact, also support direct FM recording letting the user record FM songs instantly.”

Manisha Sood, Country Manager, India and SAARC, SanDisk stated, “Today’s generation demands personalized product and services, and MP3 players cater to this need by enabling a consumer to personalize the music that he listens to.” This has made the MP3 player a must-have accessory for young urban consumers.

Rahul Gupta, Director, Computer Kitchen, pointed out that in bigger cities the trend is to go for feature-rich MP3 players that support MPEG 4 viewing, built-in FM, voice recording, etc. “In smaller cities, the less aware and more price conscious people are happy with a simple MP3 player, with or without FM support,” he added. Overall, few people give special emphasis to the MP3 player’s navigation software and ease of use, etc. Most people just go by the look of the product followed by the quality of sound.

Today it’s all about technology and ease of use. The Internet is the medium for downloading content to the player. The Net and song-swapping services have made MP3 a killer application.

Most customers are not technically inclined to understand differences between music file formats such as MP3, WMA and AAC (Advanced Audio Coding). They believe that it should be easy to load and transfer music files to an MP3 player that they intend to purchase. In most MP3 players, users have to only do Drag/Drop to transfer files.

Ken Nakazawa, Division Head, Personal Audio, Sony India felt that multi-codec music players are important because these allow consumers to forget about file formats and make it much easier and more convenient for them to use.

Flash-based players

Flash-based MP3 players are very popular today. These are the smallest players in the MP3 category and unlike other MP3 players, the flash-based ones have no moving parts. This results in longer battery life. Flash-based MP3 players are also sturdy, making them ideal for any strenuous outdoor activity.

Kazi pointed out the advantage of Flash-based players, “They are extremely light and easy to carry. The only disadvantage in the past was that they had limited storage capability.” But now MP3 player providers are launching Flash memory players having huge storage capacities with Creative’s ZEN 32GB Flash memory player being a good example.

“Flash-based models will have the advantage of the overall size of the product which customers prefer. With capacities of flash-based models growing, this category will continue to drive the market gaining over HDD players,” added Nakazawa.

Sood agreed with Nakazawa that Flash-based models will definitely continue to dominate the MP3 player market. She added, “Flash-based models are much lighter and trendier as compared to the HDD-based models.”

Price is not a concern

Consumers take into consideration certain factors when shopping for an MP3 player, these are, namely brand, design, storage capacity, etc. It appears that price is not an important aspect for most of them.

Gupta added that while brand, quality of sound, navigation software (ease of use) are the key features demanded by consumers, followed by design and storage capacity, most buyers are not overly concerned about the price tag of a product.

“If the consumer is getting a good quality product with many excellent features then he will not mind spending a little more on a good brand,” asserted Kazi.

Nakazawa from Sony however disagreed that price has not been a matter of concern. He said, “Value for money will always be a driving factor. In that sense, a good price point is very important. It doesn’t necessarily mean expensive or cheap.”

Sood believed that while brand, design and storage capacity are certainly factors that one looked at while shopping for an MP3 player, price, although not the primary concern, can sometimes play a deciding role. This is particularly keeping in mind the fact that many buyers are either students or young professionals just starting their career.

Keeping the price points in mind, MP3 player manufacturers are looking to create products that are differentiated from their competition by good designs, more features, color choice, accessories, variety of models, and storage capacity.

Competition from cell phones

Handset manufacturers like Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, and Samsung have launched mobile phones in India that play MP3s and have reasonably high capacities to store music and these are giving MP3 players a run for their money. For instance, the Nokia N91 with 4 GB memory allows users to store up to 3,000 music tracks.

Nowadays, instead of having multiple devices, the user wants to have one device that can handle all functions. Consequently, if mobile phones can play music then why would users prefer MP3 players? Also, when compared to standalone MP3 players, music mobile phones allow users to also download music from the Web, even while on the move.

However, portable MP3 players still lead in their memory capabilities: high-end devices can hold as much as 30-60 GB. But will the user care about the number of songs that a MP3 player can store that a mobile phone cannot? MP3 player vendors may try to defend themselves by offering even greater disk space, but over time they might still end up losing market share.

vinita.gupta@expressindia.com