Global sales of digital music players, including MP3 players and other devices, are expected to increase more than 200 percent by 2009 says IDC.
Interestingly, IDC also forecasts that Music-enabled phones, gaming devices, and DVD players that support compressed audio (the "others" category) will also gain popularity, with the market for these devices is expected to reach $114 billion in sales on more than 700 million units by 2009.
Given that the forcast concludes that global sales of digital music players are expected to hit $145.4 billion in 2009, IDC is effectively saying that 78% of the digital music player market in 2009 will be Music-enabled phones, gaming devices, and DVD players that support compressed audio.
That sounds great, but remember that in Q1 2005 the global phone market had worldwide sales totalling 180.6 million units, a 17-percent increase from the first quarter of 2004; while worldwide mobile phone sales for 2004 surpassed 674 million units in 2004, a 30 percent increase from 2003.
So - depending on how IDC is doing the calculations (we dont' know because we haven't bought the study) - this could really not be real news, given that more and more mobile phones are masquerading as music players nowadays.
It's not all bad news for Apple though - flash based hardware devices, like the iPod Nano, is expected to number some 124 million units by 2009, up from 26.4 million in 2004; and hard drive based units are expected to see a compound annual growth rate of 21.5 percent.
[via Arstechnica]
