Portable Media Players

27.1% of respondents have never owned a portable media player (MP3 player), representing the 9th largest untapped market of any of the 16 devices studied, according to a Researchscape survey of 1,000 consumers.

Purchase Interest

34.1% of respondents were “very interested” or “extremely interested” in purchasing an MP3 player. People interested in portable media players are most likely to also be interested in portable DVD players (0.349 correlation), digital cameras with video (MP3s, 0.305 correlation) and handheld game consoles (0.286 correlation).

MP3 players are a category that benefits just a little from device substitution: 2.0% of respondents would replace a broken device from a different category (typically, a portable DVD player, selected by 1.0%) with an MP3 player.

2.1% of respondents without an MP3 player said it was the device they didn’t own that they were most interested in purchasing. Of all respondents, 1.1% identified MP3 players as the device they were most interested in purchasing, the fourth lowest interest level. Reasons given:

• “Need music on the go.”
• “Phone cannot hold enough music that I listen to.”
• “I like to run, and it would be nice to have.”
• “I love music, and I haven’t had an MP3 player in a long time.”
• “Because the last device I had for listening to music like that was a Walkman in the ’80s.”

Current Ownership

50.2% of respondents currently own an MP3 player, the 7th highest ownership rate of the 16 devices studied.

19.9% no longer use the device, giving it the fourth highest rate of lapsed usage (compared to an average of 16.3%). A narrow majority of owners, 51.2%, reported using their MP3 player frequently.

In a separate survey of 400 consumers, we asked respondents a hypothetical question: which devices would they purchase if they had lost all of their devices in a robbery and new purchases were covered by insurance? 46.7% of current owners were “very interested” or “extremely interested” in repurchasing an MP3 player, an average repurchase interest level.

12.7% of MP3 owners said it was the device that they were least interested in replacing if it broke.

Past Ownership

22.7% of respondents have owned a MP3 player in the past but no longer do so, the fifth highest rate of past ownership. This represents 31.1% of the group of current and former owners.