Two of Asia's major consumer electronics makers are jumping full force into the battle for the world's portable digital audio playing user-ship.
Matsushita of Japan, the parent of Panasonic, has unwrapped four new such players, while Samsung of Korea unwrapped six new models, both on March 16 and both saying they're looking to boost their market presence in a field now dominated by Apple's iPod.
Matsushita now has a small share of the digital audio player market but hopes they can attract new buyers with ultra-small products, which don't need hard drives and operate simply.
Two of their new models include built-in flash memory, one storing up to 512MB of data and the other storing up to 1GB, while the two other new models work with Secure Digital (SD) memory cards.
All four new Matsushita models fit in your palm and go on sale in Japan April 8, with the basic model estimated at $134 (14,000 yen) and the most advanced flash memory model at $268 (28,000 yen). They will launch around the world later in April and in May, Matsushita said announcing the four new models.
Panasonic brand corporate marketing director Shunzo Ushimaru said at the Matsushita announcement that the company has no plans to build or launch a hard disc drive portable digital player, since the company thinks consumers will prefer using the memory card players.
"When it comes to music and media it has to be removable," he said. "This is extremely important and it is the reason why the cassette, the CD, and the mini-disc were so popular."
Samsung's six new players join the company's eight existing models and range from a 256MB flash memory player to a 30GB hard disk drive, the latter able to hold up to 7,500 songs. The new Samsung players are expected to hit the market before the end of the first half of 2005.
"We aim to sell more than 5 million MP3 players this year versus 1.7 million sold last year," said vice president Suh-Kyum Kim at a press conference announcing the new Samsung players, "and will seek various strategic alliances with content providers such as Microsoft to boost sales."
The six new, pocketsize Samsung players include color screens and radio tuners with some having features letting you watch music videos or take digital photos, Samsung said.
Kim said Samsung hopes to pick up a ten percent United States portable digital player market share in 2004, while he didn't say how much share the company picked up in the U.S. last year.
