MP3/MP4/PMP PLAYER NEWS&INFORMATION

It is universally acknowledged that the MP4 players are getting more and more popular in the market both at home and abroad. Since MP4 can not only do whatever MP3 functions, but also endowed with camera, interactive download functions and so on. It is growing up to be a gold mine coveted by all the farseeing manufacturers. Actually, MP4 can be also called a PVP (Personal Video Player) or PMP (Portable Media Player) domestically in China. It is now welcomed by modern people, especially young white collars for its stylish design, diversified functions, personal care and esteem for individual values.

Comparative Statement of MP4 and MP3

Sales of the MP4 player, the successor to the still popular MP3, are obviously gaining momentum in the electronics market. Then in what aspects might MP4 be superior to MP3 and what are their respective advantages? At first, an MP4 player is an apparatus that plays MPEG-4 files. Though there isn't any clear definition of its functions, many manufacturers classify it as sort of multimedia player. It can easily download and play video files via the USB. Then compared with MP3, an MP4 player can provide higher definition video effects, better acoustic fidelity, a more advanced compression technology and easier access to many other media units.

Despite all the advantages that MP4s provide, MP3 players are still occupying a big slice of the market for three reasons: MP3 has been a very popular music format, which makes it difficult for MP4 to break through; MP3 files already occupy a large amount of internet space with very fast and convenient download speeds; MP3s are cheaper than MP4s. Yet MP4 is gaining momentum and gradually becoming the most popular standard for digital players, especially for portable playback of video files. It also surpasses MP3s in quality with its powerful functions undoubtedly. It can readily connect to TVs, projectors and other monitors to present high definition films.

MP4 Market Draws Great Attention

As we all know, the first MP4 player in the market was released by Archos, a specialized French manufacturer, in 2002. With the cultivation of the MP4 makers lead by Archos, the market of 1000 million RMB emerges in 2005, which surprised most of the industrial pals. Encouraged by this excitement, many domestic makers, beside of some Japanese giants like Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi, are digging this gold mine in succession, including: Tsinghua Unisplendour, Little Swan, Changhong, aigo, MobiNote and so on. Almost all AV giants, together with some software titans or IT manufacturers, have set foot in the region of MP4s.

In fact, the MP4 market in EU and America has reached a high level of 4000 million euros in 2004, while the market in China is only RMB 200 million at the same time, most of which are gained from the retailing market. However, the figure has risen up by 310% in 2005, ended in RMB 1000 million. Estimation from a professional institution shows the market in China will end up in RMB 10000 million in 2008, thus making a great breakthrough.

An MP4 player mainly consists of main chip, memory, display screen, semiconductor components and software system. Although the main chip costs less comparably, its power determines the ultimate play effect. Therefore, in the main chip field, a couple of manufacturers have launched relevant products targeting at MP4. The amazing growth in MP4 market has drawn a great attention from lots of makers, ranging from parts suppliers to MP4 terminal makers, among which including a group of giants such as Intel, AMD, TI and Samsung and so on.

In the upstream field, due to the R&D difficulties for MP4, a large proportion of MP4 products in current market are designed by foreign makers or markers from Taiwan. For Chinese domestic markers, they have to follow the model of Parts Supplier plus Design House. Chinese domestic design houses may make most of their advantages on design ability and low operational cost, thereby to occupy a market share. In the currently Chinese MP4 market, there are more than 40 brands, with over 70 models. The domestic brands far outstripped foreign ones in quantity, similar to MP3 market. And the Chinese domestic makers can be divided into two groups: one is self-design and manufacturing with the parts purchased, another one is simply assembling.

The first MP4 designed by a Chinese company using its own proprietary technologies was put on sale in Shenzhen on Monday. The maker, Shenzhen Techno Science Technology R&D Co., spent one year working out its own operating system, an embedded multimedia processing software, for the MP4. Shenzhen Techno's operating system has a better compatibility with documents of different formats, including .asf, .wmv, .avi, .wav, .swf, MPEG-1, MP4 and .rm and .rmvb, which are popular online. The MP4 has a 20G mini hard disk and a battery that can work five hours. It can also be used as a digital camera and a digital video camera. It was the very first time for a Chinese company to develop and patent a MP4. So the company doesn't have to pay patent fees to foreign companies but can sell its patent authorization to other MP4 makers now. Now, it has received orders from MP4 makers from Panama and Turkey.

2005: The Year Zero for MP4 Industry in China

Statistics from a domestic institution shows the sales volume of MP4s in 2004 was only 40000 pcs, while the first half of 2005 has surpassed this achievement. Thus the year 2005 is considered to be the year zero for MP4 industry in China. Besides, the annual increasing rate between 2005 and 2009 will maintain an astonishing speed over 100%.

At the very inception of China’s MP4 industry in 2003, there were few brands and models, most of which were from French marker of ARCHOS. The second half of 2004 witnessed a large-scale inflow of companies into China mainland market from South Korea, Taiwan and other regions and countries, meanwhile, a great deal of home brands were also emerging very soon. The first half of 2005 saw a burst of MP4 terminal market, the MP4 models launched in this period accounted for about 51.9% of models in existence. Global MP4 average price is expected to around at US $300 in 2006, the market start take off.

Due to the constant price decrease of flash memory and hard disk memory, and number increase of terminal makers, MP4 price will continual decline. 2004 saw a most sharp decrease in MP4 price worldwide, both of flash memory MP4 and hard disk MP4, all dropped over 10% on average. Hard disk MP4 will keep the decline level for a period, whereas flash memory MP4 would be on a slow downward comparably. The acceptable price of USD $300 will be a stimulus for the global market booming in 2006, factors restrict the development would be gradually disappeared, accordingly, global MP4 shipment would increase to over 2.3 million in 2006, from 0.3 million in 2004. It will grow to be the fourth biggest consumer hotspot followed MP3, digital camera and DV.

Though the industry is currently fragmented, the consolidation that a single technical standard brings is sure to make for exciting development. While other formats and versions come and go, MPEG-4 will safeguard multimedia content for a secure future. And of course, resources saved in encoding, hosting and storing media can be better used to create a wider library of digital media, which benefits the entire Internet community. MPEG-4 was finalized in 1998 and became an international standard in 2000. Whereas the MP3 industry in China has suffered from the “cold snap” of price, some related state departments are planning to make a national criterion for MP4 by the end of this year so as to standardize this industry.

Forecast of MP4’s Tomorrow

In a word, 2005-2006 is regarded as Advance Users MP4 market, the mass MP4 market would be startup in 2007. According to RIC (a research institute), the year of 2005 is the startup year for Chinese MP4 market, a sizable percentage of the advance users who prefer watching mobile video start to buy MP4 products, the turnout is expected to increase two times than 2004, up to 78 thousand sets. The year of 2006 will remain for the advance users market, resulting from the factors such as price sensitive buyers, lack of content and slow product cognition and so on. The mass market will be formed in 2007, and then into a mature period, the increase rate of shipment will gradually decline from the year of 2008 to 2009.

On the one hand, considering the low consumption level and comparatively high price sensitive buyers in China, flash memory MP4 will enjoy a higher market share in China than in world market. This trend will be increasingly evident until 2008, which benefits the popularity of MP4 inChina. From the year of 2009, the market share of flash memory MP4 inChina is expected to decline due to the fast price decline of hard disk MP4.

On the other hand, MP4 is not likely to overspread the existed market as MP3 do in a short period due to the technological barriers and comparatively higher prices. Furthermore, some industrial insiders believe that the higher price and the foreign-monopolized core technology lead to the high cost of investment in MP4s making for most domestic manufacturers, therefore, it is still an uneasy task for MP4 to overtrump MP3 at present time. But for tomorrow, who knows?

I love my iPod, but I do not love that it's basically a PC accessory. No PC (or Mac) nearby means no content on the iPod, and no updates. There's got to be a better way.

I've previously covered a company, Music Gremlin, that's building a Wi-Fi-enabled music player. And at the D4 conference this morning, a new company, Zing, is rolling out a service that enables other companies (like its partners Sirius and Yahoo) to build their own complete music infrastructures--content to player--that work just fine without a PC connection.

The Zing prototype shown at D4 had both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios built in. The radios are used to download music and to upload data about what you are listening to. If you have one of these players, you can do cool things, like see what your friends are listening to, then play samples of those tracks, or buy songs and albums directly from the player. If you try buy items when you're not in range of a Wi-Fi access point, the product will queue up your requests and batch-process them when you do eventually connect.

Most people will probably start using a Zing-powered player by first loading it with music that they have on their computer. But say you have just one track by Johnny Cash, and when you're playing it you realize you want more. On your player, you can flag the album it came from, and next time you're in Wi-Fi range, the player will download it for you. The player will stream Sirius radio content (via Wi-Fi, not a satellite connection) and will enable you to do the same thing when you're listening to radio tracks.

The Zing reference player has both a built-in speaker and a microphone, which, combined with the Wi-Fi radio, means it has all the hardware a voice-communication platform needs. So as a bonus, the software enables you to talk with your friends, walkie-talkie style, over the Wi-Fi network.

Building networking capabilities into music players is the obvious next step in their evolution. But wireless devices (cell phones) are also getting music players built into them. It's a bit early to say definitively which model will win out, but it's worth noting that for most people, a cell phone is a necessity while a music player is a luxury; I think that indicates which way the market is going to tilt.

The first Zing-powered players should ship this year, carrying the Sirius brand.

MP4 stands for MPEG-4. It was developed by the Moving Picture Experts group (MPEG). MP4 is a versatile new internet standard for music and video (multimedia) files. By comparison, MPEG 1 was the format used on CDs and MP3's and MPEG 2 was for DVDs. MP4 is a multimedia standard for computers and wireless devices. MP4 is becoming more and more popular. It allows easy and fluent authoring and playback of multimedia over a wide variety of platforms from computers, game consoles and multimedia players to all sort of wireless devices. It is a true internet standard.

By far, MP3 (MPEG-1 layer 111), which is a type of audio file, is a lot more well known among the general population. This is because it is used and has been used extensively for the creation, storing and transferring of music files on computers and in MP3 players. MP4 in time will likely become more and more well known as it is used in the growingly popular MP4 multimedia players and in assorted internet related wireless products.

The iPod is a brand of portable media players designed and marketed by Apple Computer and launched in 2001. Devices in the iPod range are primarily music players, designed around a central scroll wheel (although the iPod shuffle has buttons only). The full-sized model stores media on an internal hard drive, while the smaller iPod nano and iPod shuffle use flash memory. Like many digital audio players, iPods can also serve as external data storage devices. Apple chose to focus its development on the iPod's simple user interface and its ease of use, rather than on technical capability.

As of October 2005, the lineup consists of the 5th generation iPod that plays videos; the smaller iPod nano; and the display-less iPod shuffle. These models were updated in September 2006.

The bundled software used for transferring music is called iTunes. As a jukebox application, iTunes stores a comprehensive library of music on the user's computer and can play, burn, and rip music from a CD. Very little organization and no ripping or burning may be done on the iPod itself. The most recent version has additional photo and video synchronization features.

The iPod is currently the world's best-selling digital audio player and its worldwide mainstream adoption makes it one of the most popular consumer brands. Some of Apple's design choices and proprietary actions have, however, led to criticism and legal battles.

Report Introduction
Research points: Profile of industry development, analysis of industry chain, R&D design, development analysis, analysis of distribution and circulation channel, trend analysis, development forecast, CCID's recommendations
Vendors involved: Intel, Freescale, TI, AMD, Samsung, SingmaTel, Philips, ADI, Toshiba, Action, etc
Author: Digital AV product research group, Division of Consumer Electronics Consultation, CCID Consulting
Publication time: February of 2006
Price of English electronic version: USD 2,400
Report Contents
I. Profile of the Development of China's MP3 / PMP Player Industry in 2005
(I) Industry development
(II) Industry structure
(III) Industry characteristic
II. Status of China's MP3 / PMP Player Industry Chain in 2005
(I) Structure of China's MP3/ PMP player industry chain
(I) Basic structure of China's MP3/ PMP player industry chain
2. Profile of the development of R&D and design industry
3. Development status of OEM/ODM industry
4. Development status of complete player sales and service industry
(II) Basic characteristic of China's MP3 / PMP player industry chain
III. Analysis of China's MP3 Player Industry Chain in 2005
(I) BOM cost study and core technology of MP3 / PMP Player
1. BOM cost model of MP3 player
2. State of the art and trend analysis
(II) Characteristic and development trend of China's MP3 / PMP player industry
1. Characteristic of industry development
2. Degree of industry combination
3. Introduction to major OEM / ODM vendors
(III) MP3 player chip
1. Status quo and trend
2. Evaluation on major vendors
(IV) MP3 player memory
1. Status quo and trend
2. Evaluation on major vendors
(V) Display screen and backlight IC of MP3 player)
1. Status quo and trend
2. Evaluation on major vendors
(VI) MP3 player software
IV. Analysis of China's PMP Player Industry Chain in 2005
(I) BOM cost study and core technology of PMP player
1. BOM cost model of PMP player
2. State of the art and trend analysis
(II) Characteristic and development trend of China's PMP player OEM / ODM industry
1. Characteristic of industry development
2. Degree of industry combination
3. Introduction to major OEM / ODM vendors
(III) PMP player chip
1. Status quo and trend
2. Evaluation on major vendors
(IV) PMP player memory
1. Status quo and trend
2. Evaluation on major vendors
(V) Display screen of PMP player
1. Status quo and trend
2. Evaluation on major vendors
V. Analysis of R&D and design for China's MP3 / PMP player
(I) Analysis of MP3 / PMP player design industry
1. Regional distribution
2. Size characteristic
3. Scheme characteristic
4. Model of returns
(II) Value of MP3 / PMP player design industry
(III) Analysis of the development trend for MP3 / PMP player design industry
(IV) Evaluation on major vendors
VI. Analysis of China's MP3 / PMP Player Distribution and Circulation Channel Industry Chain in 2005
(I) Current status of distribution and trend analysis
(II) Current status of circulation channel and trend analysis
(VII) Analysis of the development trend for China's MP3 / PMP player industry chain
(I) Main factors influencing the development of future market
(II) Analysis of market growth trend
(VIII) Forecast for the development of China's MP3 / PMP player industry chain, 2006 - 2010
(I) scale forecast for the development of MP3 / PMP player industry
(II) Forecast for the development of critical components of MP3 / PMP Player market
IX. CCID's Recommendations
(I) Technology strategy
(II) Investment strategy
(III) Market strategy
Report Description