Sony takes share from Apple iPod in Japanese market

Sony takes share from Apple iPod in Japanese market

It is not exactly a comeback for the Sony in the digital music player segment, but they have made a beginning in their home market. The company’s new range of digital music players have somewhat cut into the popularity of the iPod music player in the Japanese market. However, there is no competition between the two companies in the American and European markets with Apple being the clear leader.

Apple iPod has become somewhat of an icon in these countries and continues to sell in big numbers despite the appearance of cheaper and feature rich products from the competition. One of the prime reasons behind that is the popularity of the iTunes music store, which let the users buy songs from the Internet for their iPods for just 99 cents. There are competing services from other companies as well including Sony, but the convenience of the combination has been unmatchable.

iPod however is the top seller of hard drive players in Japan with Sony’s flash based music players topping the sales of the iPod Shuffle that uses flash memory storage. It would be hard to replicate this success in the overseas market for Sony with the brand value of Apple being one of the primary reasons. Sony despite its heritage in the Walkman brand has failed to take on Apple because of wrong decisions taken by the company to stick to their proprietary format for songs in the earlier days.

One of the prime reasons for the success of Sony’s flash based digital music players is the battery capabilities of some of their products which last 50 hours on single charge. Sony’s flash music players also have display screens as compared to Apple iPod Shuffle. Moreover, Sony’s products are somewhat better looking than rectangular shaped Apple iPods.