Portable Media Player Wholesale from China

2005 is considered as the first year of an era of development in China's PMP (portable media player) market, but since the beginning of its development, portable media player has been too highbrow to be popular, the market has not taken off as expected. After nearly 4 years market cultivation, now the portable media player market is in expansion. The data of the market research agency ISuppli shows that the global portable media player annual shipments will reach 117 million pieces in 2007, which is equivalent to twice as much as the amount of 58 million pieces in 2006, and in 2009 the global portable media player shipments will reach 162 million pieces, it has increased nearly 40% on the basis of 2007.

As the prices of the LCD screens for handheld devices and the flash memory are continuously decreasing, LCD can support higher-quality video formats and the rich RM/RMVB format video contents on the network, which is the motive power to promote the market growth. And the technical issues, namely the contradiction between the power consumption and the performance is an important reason that have hindered the development of the portable media player market at the present stage. However, with the upgrading of chip technology and the smooth of each link of the industry supply chain, these problems will be resolved soon. Although the current market is in a slow rise stage, the future of the portable media player market is worth looking forward to.

Although the future of the portable media player market is remarkable, the single function portable media player device is likely to face challenges. With the development of technology, mobile phones, GPS, mobile TV, MID, UMPC, and gaming devices (e.g. Sony PSP), and many other handheld devices can be used to perform the traditional portable media player functions, such as video and audio playback. From the point of view of the user experience, carrying different types of portable handheld devices is inconvenient for the users. Therefore, the portable media player market needs more diversified functional experience, rather than the original definition of the functions of portable media player. portable media player in the product categories and market segments is too complex. The integration of portable media player in the future development must be done.

One report of iSuppli has also expressed its concern about this phenomenon. The report notes that over the next few years the mobile phones with multimedia features will become strong competitors of portable media player. However, iSuppli also says, in spite of this, portable media player will not waver in the technical advantages.

Some experts think that the major factors which impact the development of the portable media player market include the master chip, LCD, memory devices and the supply of such key devices. The supply chain of these key components are basically smooth and the costs are reasonable. But a few years ago, the cost of portable media player was high, which was not acceptable in the market. Today, however, the unit price of the key devices has dropped greatly and we have the conditions to push the market grow rapidly. But the power consumption still needs further improvement. It must be ensured that the portable media player can be used for a long period of time on the basis of portability and the video display should be for more than four hours at least. At the same time, under limited power consumption, the product performance must be guaranteed and a variety of play formats can be supported.

Differing from the optimism about the price and cost, ADI will continue to list product cost as the main problem in the PMP market development. In addition, the lack of content, the market and the users' acceptance degree all test the portable media player market development.

In addition to the above market acceptance, power consumption and cost price issues which are generally concerned about by the chip makers, the ability of portable media player its own to support video formats still remains to be expanded continuously. As audio and video technologies are developing unceasingly, if ASIC or custom devices are used, it is difficult to support all video formats. The better choice is to use the DSP technology to meet the rapid changing requirements of the audio and video codec. The users can update the software to support the upgrading of the codec at any time. Of course, the video format conversion is not easy. The users always want to obtain higher-quality audio and video. For the audio codec, the users would like to have the effect of CD-like sound quality. Therefore, in addition to the current MP3, WMA and WMV and other standards, portable media player also needs to support APE or FLAC or other audio codec. In terms of video codec, RMVB itself is in the continuous development. Portable media player needs to adapt to such changes at any time, in order to support GPS, mobile TV, games and other different types of functions, portable media player processor should have more powerful functions than the original ARM framework, so the portable media player can have more flexible features.

The lack of content has always been a headache for the portable media player terminal manufacturers. The users all hope that their portable media player products can support more audio and video formats and have more audio and visual enjoyment. However, because of the patent constraint, the terminal vendors need to pay a higher price in order to make the portable media player support more audio and video formats, undoubtedly the price will eventually be passed on to the end-users. The copyright costs of the multimedia contents are always high. It should be considered for the whole industrial chain how the end-users access more multimedia information conveniently and low-costly.

After several years of cultivation, the portable media player market in China is becoming more and more mature. But compared with other regional markets, the demand continues to be different. The user experience is more valued in overseas markets. In the Chinese market people have just begun to consider adding a variety of new features to the traditional portable media player features. Many market participants are also limited to price war, the product features are still relatively limited, the solutions are lack of innovation, no remarkable products such as iPhone and ITouch have appeared. Portable media player OEM should add innovative technologies to their equipments, such as WiFi, Skype phones, Google maps, Internet radio functions. Of course, some use-friendly features also need to be added, such as the well-known multi-touch screen in the iPhone and iTouch. The needs of portable media player products which can support RMVB format are on the high side in Chinese market; the AVI, WMV video formats are demanded more in the overseas markets. In addition, the simple-to-use function is also a major demand characteristics in the international market.

When the industry's enthusiasm for the portable media player is gradually rising, another emerging portable products - mobile Internet devices (MID) have emerged gradually. The MID concept made by Intel has positioned to achieve the Internet access, communications, entertainment, information search, Office applications and so on at any time in any where. Will this portable equipment which has similar essence as portable media player pose a threat to the portable media player market? Although there is certain competitive relationship between MID and PMP, the competition of MID is mainly from UMPC and smart phone market. There are still differences in the application of MID and PMP. MID lays emphasis on business applications, and portable media player values entertainment more. Judging from the user group, MID is mainly for business people, and portable media player is suitable for all ages. In addition, portable media player has relatively low cost and more entertainment. MID faces more competitive pressures than portable media player. MID is initiated by Intel, the core and key components are controlled by Intel. Because of the lack of competition, there is not much room for reduction in costs, which is very detrimental to the development of the industry.

At the present stage, MID market positioning is not clear yet. The definition of MID and portable media player is different, so the competitive relationship between the two is not obvious. With the integration of the portable media player that contains WiFi and other features, it will be able to expand the close relationship between people and the Internet more obviously.

Although it is still very difficult to judge whether the appearance of MID will affect the development of portable media player or not, the latest processor for MID released by Intel will undoubtedly boost the development process of MID. It is reported that 20 manufacturers such as Lenovo, AIGO, Panasonic and so on have introduced the prototype. Lenovo also says that in the second half of this year they will formally introduce the products to the market.

At the same time, TI also announces the launch of OMAP3 series processors, OMAP3 series are applicable to MID products. At present the processors of Intel and AMD are used in a lot of MID, but the product prices of the two companies are high, the users can not accept this as a hand-held application equipment. The development of MID market will depend on the decline curve of the BOM cost system.