Over the years, more and more music players and smart phones have been popping up over the years competing against the inferior Apple iPod family. iPods sales dominates the music player industry with 92.2% of total music player sales despite being the most expensive in the market. You can easily reason that no other company comes close to beating down the iPod family any time soon.
The Goods of The iPod
The iPod family does have its reasons for being the best-selling group of music players on the market today. Its attractive and inviting appearance makes it extremely eye-catching to the public. Apple Inc. also uses lots of advertisements to promote the iPod family whereas ads are rarely found for other music players. Another thing I like about the iPod family is that it includes high quality earphones. Other companies tend to try to save money here and include the cheapest earphones money can buy with their products. Apple also includes the iTunes software which users can buy and store music into the iPod in a relatively friendly manner.
The Competition
Companies like iRiver, SanDisk, Creative, and even Microsoft have been trying to take over the music player industry from the long known juggernaut. These companies have made some of the most appealing music players. Most of the music players these companies make are loaded with features like a built in FM tuner and recorder which none of the iPod family has. They also tend to be cheaper than the respective iPods they are competing with.
For example, the SanDisk Sansa e280 8GB Digital Multimedia MP3 Player is an extremely worthy competitor against the 8GB iPod Nano. The SanDisk has much more features for a cheaper price. The Buy.com price for the SanDisk is only $128.39 whereas the iPod nano's price is $199.99.The SanDisk has voice recording and can receive radio broadcasts without needing add ons like the iPod. You can even record what's on the radio with the built in FM recorder. Also, there is an expansion slot on the SanDisk allowing even more storage than the built in 8 GB so there is more flexibility with this product. The SanDisk and the iPod have about the same battery life. The iPod only seems to reign superior in appearance and ergonomics as it is slightly thinner and smoother than the SanDisk and also has a bigger screen. Of course, more or less, I hope you realize that the SanDisk is a better value than the iPod.
Software
The iTunes software can be very beneficial for some, but definitely not for others. If you buy music for $1 per song on iTunes, the software is very user friendly. But when you buy songs from other song distributors like Napster, you may find it's a pain sending the songs into iTunes just to put it onto your iPod. It is very frustrating there isn't a “drag and drop” feature to go with the iPod. You can't just transfer audio and video files straight into the drive of the iPod, and you have to go the long way and send it into iTunes and then into the iPod. Almost all other music players support the drag and drop feature, reducing the time it takes to upload songs onto you music player and not messing with a software that can be a hassle.
Conclusion
I hope you will consider this article when you buy a new music player. I'm not trying to discourage you from buying an iPod, but just opening your eyes that there are some worthy music players out there that deserve your attention.
