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Portable media players may struggle to find market

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CIOL Bureau
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Duncan Martell

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SAN FRANCISCO: If you build the portable media player, will they come?

Manufacturers keen to create the next iPod are starting to flood the market with a bevy of electronic devices that play movies, music and display photos.

Even Apple Computer Inc. CEO Steve Jobs, who has repeatedly pooh-poohed the notion of a video iPod, may be getting into the act, if speculation on Apple rumor Web sites is to be believed.

The iPod was a stunning, runaway success. But it's not clear the next wave of media players will have the same appeal.

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Ranging from devices from Archos, Creative Technology, Epson and the Sony PSP and others, the players range in cost from about $200 to about $800. And, for the most part, they aren't small enough to drop in a pants pocket, analysts said, who question whether, in their current incarnation, they'll take off.

"In many ways, I do view portable media players as a technology in search of a market," said Van Baker, an analyst at industry research firm Gartner. "If I'm carrying music with me, chances are I want to carry something that's a little smaller than a personal music player."

Of course, digital music players are now as small as a pack of gum and range in size to as large as the dimensions of a deck of playing cards and easily slipped in pockets or clipped to belts and purses.

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In a recent review of some of the devices, PC Magazine likened the current generation of personal music players to an eight-month-old baby: "It's generally enjoyable to have around, but it still doesn't really know what it is yet. And it's occasionally fussy and a bit heavy to carry everywhere."

Says NPD Group analyst Stephen Baker: "We haven't really given people a reason why they would want to own one yet."

He noted that there is a lack of infrastructure in place to easily download and manage movies and television shows, a problem that iPod solved for the music world.

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"Downloading long videos is still not super easy to do and doesn't save you a heck of a lot of time over going to the video store, renting a video and playing it on your portable DVD player," NPD's Baker said.

Even so, Web sites that traffic in rumors about forthcoming products from the notoriously tight-lipped Apple have been buzzing for more than a year about a video iPod.

What Jobs may have up his sleeve is a music video download service or the like that is seamlessly integrated into the iTunes online music store and the iTunes digital music jukebox software, analysts said.

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If Jobs and company can pull that off -- delivering a way to buy and manage video content as easily as with iTunes -- then there may well be a market for personal media players, analysts said.

"If indeed someone could bring a service to market to go along with this device that was as drop-dead simple as the iPod iTunes interface, then perhaps there is a market," Gartner's Baker said.

That may be why, analysts said, Apple has waited this long before rolling out what could be called a video iPod, while it works out all the kinks. Wall Street analysts have already said the company could introduce such a device as soon as September.

And as with most gizmos in the consumer electronics market, price is always a key consideration. At about $800 for the Archos AV700 Mobile DVR with 100 gigabytes of storage, that might well be too pricey for many.

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