As market leader, Apple prepares to upgrade its iPod products and launch Motorola's ROKR iTunes phone. A national study of 1,062 Americans finds that the average digital music player contains 375 songs. 
Among key highlights of the research:
- Despite a relatively high average of 375 songs per player, 50 percent of digital music players hold fewer than 100 songs - suggesting a perfect target for limited capacity mobile phone / digital music player hybrids. A quarter of digital music players have 100-499 songs while the remaining 25 percent have more than 500 songs.
- 21 percent of young Americans (12-29) have a digital music player. Among those 30-49, ownership is 12 percent, and among those 50+, it drops to 4 percent.
- Apple is the leading brand with a 53 percent market share of all digital music players, with Sony and RCA tied for a distant second with 9 percent share each.
- iPod owners are big music fans: they have significantly bigger libraries (504 songs on average) compared to owners of other digital music players (246 songs).
- Motorola's iTunes phone has significant market potential for Cingular - 14 percent of Cingular's customers have a digital music player but a larger proportion, 17 percent, say they want to buy one in the next twelve months.
- Mobile phone customers are already consuming music on their phones: one-in-four Cingular (26 percent) customers have downloaded a ringtone at some point in the past (lower than Sprint Nextel customers at 32 percent but higher than Verizon at 19 percent).
- Only one-in-five (22 percent) digital music player owners bought a song online at some point in the past, suggesting a majority of the music on the devices come from owners' CDs and P2P file-sharing sources.
The information for this release comes from a random national sample of 1,062 interviews conducted in the United States via telephone in May / June 2005. The survey is part of a series of North American syndicated research programs by Toronto-based Solutions Research Group - Digital Life America in the United States and Fast Forward in Canada. To maintain an unbiased perspective, the company funds its own syndicated research.
The sample for the survey statistically reflects the regional and age / sex composition of the U.S. population. The results of the overall survey are accurate to +/-3.0 points for the population, 19 times out of 20.
