Demographics of Portable Audio Player in Japan

[Ishiyoshi]

C-NEWS's Statistical Survey on the Demographics of Portable Audio Player in Japan.

On July 5th, 2005, "C-NEWS" an internet based research institute conducted a statistical survey to determine the current demographics of portable audio players in Japan. The target group consists of a sample size of 300 people in which there are 150 women and 150 men equally. The sample size is a group of participants that enjoy music on a daily basis, regardless of variety.

The following data are results from C-NEWS's statistical survey:

Question: What type of portable audio player do you own?

Results: MD player: 65.7%, CD player: 52.7%, Audio Cassette player: 31.3%, HDD player: 13.9%, and USB based player: 12.9%

Question: Assuming you will purchase a new portable audio player, which type will you choose?

Results: HDD player: 42.3%, USB player: 17.7%, Flash based player: 13.7%, MD, CD and Audio Cassette player together amount to about 1 tenth.

C-NEWS's statistical survey also reveals that price, design and size of the device played a significant role in the users' purchasing decision. Accordingly, the statistical survey reveals that 80% of the participants consider price as being a critical variable follow by brand: Sony: 70%, Panasonic: 40% and Apple: 30%.

Translated for your reading pleasure. Discuss accordingly.

[t0fler]

with surveys like this sony seems to have its work cut out to keep the format alive,

[hobgoblin]

i can fully relate to the people that want to select hdd based players.

why? well if i get a iriver or iaudio player i have about 30GB (seems to be best cost vs capasity at the moment) of storage that i can hook up to any recent computer and drag music to and from, plus any other files for that matter.

only thing missing as that one of those companys goes full throttle and puts a touchscreen across the whole front of the player, a linux based pda interface on the drive and and still keeps the simple drag and drop interface available.

hell, make the linux enviroment bootable off the drive so that if you have a computer that can boot from usb then you can fire up a fully working linux enviroment on it

all this on a iaudio in combo with the big screen remote they have and i would be hooked for sure

the funny thing is that both brands of players are made by south-korean companys from what i understand. basicly south-korea have overtaken japan in creating next gen gizmos

only thing missing would be the ability to have this system hook up to my cellphone so that i could use the remote of the player to control my phone, checking who calls, making calls from my phonebook and so on. and dont forget about including a cable that have a handfree mic on it and allow the user to connect any kind of headset to it so that you can use your favorite headset and make calls without having to remove them

[MZ-NH1]

Correct me if I am wrong, but is the iPOD not mentioned there?

Is that because none had heard of it? Or is it called the HDD Player?

The results are quite promising for Sony. The main HQ for Sony though is in Japan isn't it? Where as their main competitor iPOD is based in the US yeh?

I think that is this survey was taken in the US, maybe the iPOD would have won, but still good news for Sony in Japan.

[Ishiyoshi]

Correct me if I am wrong, but is the iPOD not mentioned there?

←

iPod is well-known in Japan; and is considered as HDD player in this study.

[MZ-NH1]

K, that is good news for Sony then

[dragonfly]

As long as MD still goes strong in Japan, I'm happy.

[kiryen]

...I'm a little bit less optimistic about the future of MD in Japan.

Looking at the numbers, it looks like a lot of people already own MD units, but not that many are willing to pursue the technology any further. It'll probably be another couple of years before I'll consider another MD unit myself. Sony really dropped the ball with Hi-MD, no MP3 support with the first-gen units, and no true playlist support, even though that's how you organize your library in SonicStage.

Unless Sony manages to make Connect player more usable than SonicStage, the MD has no hope of winning against HDD/Flash-based players. A lot of people have large music libraries, myself included. I recently got an iPod nano and started using iTunes, and I don't think I could ever go back to SonicStage. (Not that SonicStage is without its merits, for one thing, it allows you to assign artists wtih Kanji/Kana names a letter of the alphabet so that those artists are not all clumped together at the bottom of your library, as they are in iTunes.)

As for the inherent faults of the format:

With MD, when you want to add new tracks to a disc, you need to delete an equal amount of old tracks. You end up doing a lot more maintenance work than you would with higher-capacity HDD/Flash players.

The slow transfer time makes me want to hurt small animals. 1Mb/s sounds like a decently fast time, considering you only need 15 minutes to fill up a Hi-MD, but then you actually sit around waiting those 15 minutes and it seems like an eternity.

If a good HDD/Flash recorder ever comes out, it'll be the end of Hi-MD, since it's pretty much the only advantage that the format can claim.

[garcou]

As for the inherent faults of the format:

With MD, when you want to add new tracks to a disc, you need to delete an equal amount of old tracks. You end up doing a lot more maintenance work than you would with higher-capacity HDD/Flash players.

No! you just take another disc! that's the advantage of Md!

[jadeclaw]

As for the inherent faults of the format:

With MD, when you want to add new tracks to a disc, you need to delete an equal amount of old tracks. You end up doing a lot more maintenance work than you would with higher-capacity HDD/Flash players.

Looks like, you don't understand the concept of a removable disc.

On a flash/HDD-Player, it is expected, that the tracks are deleted, retransferred and moved around.

On MD, you transfer once and leave the music on the disc.

When you take off, you simply grab the discs with the music you want.

Space running out? Add more discs to the collection. They're cheap, you know.

The slow transfer time makes me want to hurt small animals.

You better not. The Peta doesn't like that.

1Mb/s sounds like a decently fast time, considering you only need 15 minutes to fill up a Hi-MD, but then you actually sit around waiting those 15 minutes and it seems like an eternity.

Shouldn't be a problem, as you do that usually only once.

[sonic_rage]

let's hope the japan MD scene remains in the 60% range in coming years; though its future doesnt look so bright according to the stats.

MD's were once very popular in neighboring south korea, but now hardly anyone uses them.

instead they use memory and HDD based players.

Edited October 10, 2005 by sonic_rage

[anont]

Looks like, you don't understand the concept of a removable disc.

...

Shouldn't be a problem, as you do that usually only once.

For me, and probably for many audio enthusiasts, my collection of compressed music is a large number of Gigabytes. Having a $7 disk for every gig of music isn't at all an ideal solution - for one thing, how would I possible organize such a thing?

Much more convenient is just to use one disk, and keep a disk of favorite music on the disk, and then replace the music on the disk when I get bored with it. With a relatively small capacity and a slow transfer speed, MD is not nearly as good at this as an HDD player, or even a solid-state memory card. My SD card plugs directly into my computer and it takes a few seconds to delete an album and put on a new one - MD can't even compete!

[chriswyatt]

True, I gotta laugh at the people who store there entire music collection on their HDD player and then drop it and lose everything .

For me, and probably for many audio enthusiasts, my collection of compressed music is a large number of Gigabytes. Having a $7 disk for every gig of music isn't at all an ideal solution - for one thing, how would I possible organize such a thing?

Much more convenient is just to use one disk, and keep a disk of favorite music on the disk, and then replace the music on the disk when I get bored with it. With a relatively small capacity and a slow transfer speed, MD is not nearly as good at this as an HDD player, or even a solid-state memory card. My SD card plugs directly into my computer and it takes a few seconds to delete an album and put on a new one - MD can't even compete!

[pata2001]

True, I gotta laugh at the people who store there entire music collection on their HDD player and then drop it and lose everything .

The idea of most HDD DAPs is that the user has the exact duplicate (original) of the library in their PCs. So even if the DAP got screwed, all they need to do is re-transfer the library from their PCs. With USB2.0, music transfer is amazingly fast, especially for some of us who are used to the sub USB1.1 speed of NetMD.

MD/HiMD is removable, and that is an advantage as it can serve as a reliable media by itself. However, the content is impossible to back up unless you have all copies of your music on your PC with Sonicstage.

It's amazing that many people are still using PCDPs. I hope Sony wil reconsider in axing the PCDP line, but looking at the "purchase intent," it's clear that flash/HDD DAPs are what people want. Now if only a manufacture would consider the use of DVD, even the next gen optical media like blu-ray/HD-DVD. Imagine a portable blu-ray disc player, with 20GB per disc. Even a 60GB DAP will be a laughing stock since you can simply bring 3 blu-ray discs to equal that. Size is probably the only drawback, but hey, 5 discs and you get 100GB!

Edited October 11, 2005 by pata2001

[zerodB]

Despite the success of iTunes type online music stores, I would like to think that CDs will be available for sometime yet. And with that would come PCDPs, I hope.

Not everyone has access to unlimited bandwith high speed internet - in addition CDs offer uncompressed sound. At best, lossless audio compression can only offer about a 50% reduction in size at this point in time.

[kiryen]

They're cheap, you know.

Yeah... Nothing about MDs is particularly cheap. Hi-MD media runs to about 13 dollars CAD, I got the NH-1 for $500 dollars. When you calculate capacity to price, the MD isn't going to be winning any contests against HDD players.

As for peta, there's so much hello kitty where I live that small animals don't mean anything to me if they have mouths.

[Syrius]

Well, I can store more than 256 MB of MP3s on a regular MD to use with one of the 2nd gen players. For 2 dollars. I don't think you can find a 256 MB flash card for that price. (I know you were referring to HDD players. Just thought I should bring this one up, though)

Yeah, MD is slower. But if I'm using it only for music, it clearly beats flash memory hands down.

[AMPlitude]

flash players appeal more to the market because they're smaller though

[Deanage]

flash players appeal more to the market because they're smaller though

Totally agree with you on that. What about navigating the menu on a flash player though? My friend has a flash player with about 80-odd songs on it and you have to flick through every track individually to get the song you want rather than having a Artists/Albums/Song sort type of menu structure. Do you know if this is common?

[Sparky191]

Only player like that I know of is the iPod Shuffle, which is designed for random/shuffle playback. A lot of people I know listen to music like this rather than by album. Even on the shuffle you can turn off the random and just listen to one track after the next.

[tekdroid]

Unless Sony manages to make Connect player more usable than SonicStage, the MD has no hope of winning against HDD/Flash-based players.

That and a better MiniDisc. I have no doubts that Sony have a bigger, better MD up their sleeves. They know what they have to do to push the format to the next level and 1GB just ain't cutting it. They know what the market realities are for the format and I think they have a lot of room to enhance the format and extend the investment they have made in it.

Question: What type of portable audio player do you own?

Results: MD player: 65.7%, CD player: 52.7%, Audio Cassette player: 31.3%, HDD player: 13.9%, and USB based player: 12.9%

Question: Assuming you will purchase a new portable audio player, which type will you choose?

Results: HDD player: 42.3%, USB player: 17.7%, Flash based player: 13.7%, MD, CD and Audio Cassette player together amount to about 1 tenth.

These questions (or answers) seem a tad vague to me given that I don't know what the distinction is between USB Player and Flash-based Player, and why Flash Player wasn't mentioned in the first answer yet it was in the second. Seems a bit hard to believe nobody polled owns a flash-based player. Their distinction between USB and flash-based player would be nice to know, too.

All in all, it seems MD has a troubled road ahead as far as consumer perception goes for playback.

A few things contributing to this, IMO.

Size (of units)

Many flash-based units out there are a lot smaller than MD and far more 'sexy' and unobtrusive.

Size (media capacity)

1GB is quickly becoming 'old hat' (for an MD-sized unit, people expect more capacity, largely due to HD-based units). They are happy to live with a far smaller unit with less or the same capacity, though.

Speed (transferring songs)

MiniDisc/Hi-MD transfers are WELL UNDER 1MB/s. Unacceptable.

Ease-of-use (of software, DRM included)

Sony has a long way to go here.

[Deanage]

Size (of units)

Many flash-based units out there are a lot smaller than MD and far more 'sexy' and unobtrusive.

, I can just imagine someone trying to hang an MD unit off a lanyard that's hanging around their neck, flash player style.

Size (media capacity)

1GB is quickly becoming 'old hat' (for an MD-sized unit, people expect more capacity, largely due to HD-based units). They are happy to live with a far smaller unit with less or the same capacity, though.

If there were, say, a 20Gb disc (not happening unless they shrink Blu-Ray, then you have to buy a new walkman anyway), I'd be willing to pay. That'd rock. The 20Gb sweet spot. Or I could just go buy a 20Gb MuVo for less than a new unit and disc and not put up with crap software.

Speed (transferring songs)

MiniDisc/Hi-MD transfers are WELL UNDER 1MB/s. Unacceptable.

I just copied 860Mb of data onto my Hi-MD no less than an hour ago. That was painful. 45mins of torture.

Ease-of-use (of software, DRM included)

No complaints here. My SS3.2 doesn't even work! (I can still record though, that's the beauty of the format. No computer required).