Music is utility?

iPod has been a No.1 digital music player since its debut in 2001. It takes over 70% market share, overwhelming other competitors in the table below. Reportedly, over 100 Million units of iPod have been sold cumulatively and at the same time sales of songs through iTunes(which has crucial role for accelerating the sales of iPod) have hit a new high, 3 billion downloads and more as of first half in 2007.

It could be read that every iPod has 30 songs on average inside which are supposed to be directly downloaded from iTunes. Well, it looks not so big. It means there have been so many activities for accessing digital music including illegal piracy in spite of big success of iTunes.

All the actions to get music looks so pervasive as it could be considered almost utility. I think utility business model in tap water and electricity might be applicable for this digital music. Some idea on this will be posted later.

Deals on Digital Music Players - WSJ.com

The Biggest Bite
The iPod has captured the biggest chunk of the market for digital music players
Company	Market Share
Apple	71%
SanDisk	10%
Creative Labs	4%
Microsoft	3%
Samsung	2%
Source: NPD Group

What is the core in consumer electronic Device?

Nowadays so many electronic devices, especially capable of playing digital content like music, video, photos and etc., have been boasting their excellence, saying wide screen, touch pad or touch wheel(in iPod), big storage, internet connectivity, slim, fancy design and so forth. But it is definitely hardware-oriented perspective. Thing is it seems not so easy for 1st-tiers among device makers to maintain their technological leadership in terms of hardware performances. On top of that, convergence inside device domain is getting fierce. For example, iPod was launched as a music player, but it is evolving into Video iPod and then iPhone. Likewise, Sony's PlayStation was debuted for just game console, but now Sony is trying to re-position it as a media server at home, helping connect all home devices.

So I think it is no meaning any more to classify the devices with its functionality only but we have to turn to the content itself. That is, device makers start to think of user experience about diverse contents played on their devices, including how to simplify the whole process for content delivery to the devices or how to give end-to-end offering to users. In this context, I believe Nokia and Sony and Samsung have decided to recently launch their own content store along with their devices.

Especially Sony case looks quite interesting to me. it is reported that Sony gave up its own music store called Sony Connect. Instead it is trying to direct its attention to movie download. I think it is quite smart approach. Video download market looks less competitive compared to music download area where iTunes already covers almost 80% of market. and its device line-up embedded with video-playing function is quite broad and powerful. (Let's see its PS3 and Bravia TV!.) It is worthwhile for the time being to keep watching how Sony is going to shape its future in this area. Good luck, Sony!