Recent research by In-Stat shows that the worldwide PMP/MP3 market has matured even though shipments grew only 5 percent in 2009. This has driven the competitors to add features such as touchscreens and Wi-Fi connectivity to re-ignite demand.
In-Stat’s (News - Alert) research is titled “Worldwide PMP/MP3 Player Shipments Plateau as Market Succumbs to Competition from Emerging Connected Device Segment.” The report covers the global market for portable media players and MP3 devices.
The PMP/MP3 player market was among the strongest growth segments in the portable consumer electronic (CE) industry only a few years ago. But this has changed now and the market is impacted by weak consumer demand, a poor economic environment, and a stalled replacement market. Other factors that have affected the market are competition from the iPhone (News - Alert) and other audio/video-capable smartphones.
Stephanie Ethier, In-Stat analyst, noted that the Wi-Fi enabled PMPs is among the lone bright spots in the PMP market. She predicts bright future for Wi-Fi-enabled PMPs and says that their unit shipments will grow more than four-fold by 2013 from the 14 million units shipped in 2008.
In-Stat research indicates that the total worldwide shipments of PMP players will reach 225 million in 2009. The Asia Pacific will represent the largest geographic market. Analysts have seen a shift to video-enabled devices and forecasts that by 2013, only 15 percent of PMP players will be audio-only devices.
The research firm has identified Apple, Archos, Creative Technology (News - Alert), and iRiver as the key PMP competitors. The total semiconductor opportunity for PMP/MP3 player suppliers has already peaked and will now go down from here. In- Stat say that it will decline below $5 billion by 2013.
The majority of semiconductor revenue comes from NAND Flash and Video processors and Actions Semiconductor, NVIDIA (News - Alert), and Texas Instruments are among the key PMP Semiconductor competitors.