Although Apple’s (unofficially) calling hooey on the numbers, BusinessWeek’s Alex Salkever has taken a deeper look at Apple’s claim that the iPod holds “40% to 50% of the market share of all MP3 players” in the biggest markets. According to Salkever’s numbers, around 17 million flash and hard drive music players were sold last year, making the 1.5 million iPods sold only 8% to 10% of the global market. Of course, the caveat is that Apple is only claiming dominance in the largest markets, the U.S., Japan, and Western Europe, so an extra 5 million Chinese flash players here or there doesn’t really interfere with their claim. Either way, it’s a good article for iPod fans and detractors alike, and in and of itself proves what we all knew already: iPod is the music player everyone talks about.
