As market leader Apple prepares to upgrade its iPod products and launch Motorola's iTunes phone, a national study of 1,062 Americans finds that the average digital music player contains 375 songs. This could be an issue for Motorola if recent reports suggesting that the iPod Phone will be limited to just 25 songs prove to be correct. We will presumably find out later today. Among key highlights of the research:
Despite a relatively high average of 375 songs per player, 50% of digital music players hold fewer than 100 songs - suggesting a perfect target for limited capacity mobile phone / digital music player hybrids. A quarter of digital music players have 100-499 songs while the remaining 25% have more than 500 songs.
21% of young Americans (12-29) have a digital music player. Among those 30-49, ownership is 12%, and among those 50+, it drops to single digits: 4%.
iPod owners are big music fans: they have significantly bigger libraries (504 songs on average) compared to owners of other digital music players (246 songs).
Motorola's iTunes phone has significant market potential for Cingular - 14% of Cingular's customers have a digital music player but a larger proportion, 17%, say they want to buy one in the next twelve months.
Mobile phone customers are already consuming music on their phones: one-in-four Cingular (26%) customers have downloaded a ringtone at some point in the past (lower than Sprint Nextel customers at 32% but higher than Verizon at 19%).
Only one-in-five (22%) digital music player owners bought a song online at some point in the past, suggesting a majority of the music on the devices come from owners' CDs and P2P file-sharing sources.
The information for this release comes from a random national sample of 1,062 interviews conducted in the U.S. via telephone in May/June 2005. The survey is part of a series of North American syndicated research programs by Toronto-based Solutions Research Group - Digital Life America in the U.S. and Fast ForwardTM in Canada. To maintain an unbiased perspective, the company funds its own syndicated research."
Posted to the site on 7th September 2005
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/13979.php