NPD is a market research organization not to be confused with the socialist NDP political party in Canada. Couple of days ago they reported statistics that indicate Apple is locking up the digital music industry:
* Apple's flash-based music players attained 58% marketshare in March. (This means that 58% of all MP3 players sold in March were Apple branded.)
* iTunes music store has 70% of digital music downloads.* Apple harddisk-based players remain at 90% of the market.
That makes me all the more glad that the brands of MP3 players in our household have names like Samsung, iRiver, Sony, Creative, and Pine.
The good news is that this near-monopoly is irking an oligopoly: "Record label executives get more upset, saying that [Apple] has too much power over the digital music download market and is basically setting its own base rules," according to betanews.com. Sucks to be you.
As long as music players handle MP3 files, the consumer is free of monopolies -- whether on the music production side or the music reduction side.
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