Portable Music Players Poised to Skyrocket

Yahoo: According to recent In-Stat research, the market for hard-drive devices and  flash-based devices will reach more than 104 million units worldwide by 2009 - compared with the 27 million on record for 2004...The report also notes that MP3 player sales achieved a 200 percent increase over 2003 - which was no doubt fueled by the success of iTunes and other legal download stores...most analysts predict there will not be any significant challenge to Apple's iPod for at least the next two years...

Jupiter Research also expects shipments of flash-based devices to exceed that of hard-drive models starting in 2007..."This proliferation of digital music players available at a range of different prices is expected to spur sales of online a la carte downloads and music subscription services. According to a Forrester Research report, the car stereo remains the single most frequent place people listen to music, at 56%, followed by personal and home stereos at 27%. MP3 players come in last, at 1%. So digital music receivers like the Roku Soundbridge or the Sonos system that stream digital music from the PC are considered equally important over time."