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Samsung Gets Serious About MP3 Players

Company admits it misjudged the market, hopes to triple player shipments this year.

Martyn Williams, IDG News Service

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SUWON, SOUTH KOREA -- After missing out on the recent strong growth of the MP3 player market, Samsung Electronics is getting serious about competing, a senior executive says.

The company has decided to focus some effort on carving out a place for itself in the market and is hoping to more than triple player shipments this year, says David Steel, vice president of Samsung's digital media business. He spoke during a briefing with reporters at the company's headquarters here, south of Seoul.

Struggling to Compete

Samsung was in the MP3 player market several years ago but the company decided there wasn't much of a future in a product category that was largely driven by illegal downloads, says Steel.

That misjudgment of the market left the company, one of the world's biggest electronics companies, struggling to compete when Apple Computer came out with its IPod and ITunes Music Store combination.

"That legitimized [the market] in many minds," says Steel of Apple's product and service. "Now we decided from this year to get focused again."

Last year Samsung shipped 1.6 million players and is targeting shipments of 5 million this year. It will ship players worldwide, says Steel.

In March this year the company announced four MP3 players and stated its intention to become the world's leading MP3 player maker by 2007. The new players were the YP-T8, which offers video and audio playback; YH-J70, a hard drive-based model with a capacity of 30GB; YP-F1, a pendant style player interchangeable snap-on color cases; and the YP-W3L, a diamond-studded player for the fashion conscious.

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