Philips braces for portable media players market

The serious competition from cellphone-makers, who are bringing in in-built MP3 player in the mobile phones, is in no way dampening the spirit of companies that are bringing in stand-alone portable media players (PMP).

Even though Apple is said to be facing difficulty in defending its turf built over the years in popularising its iPod brand of portable media players, there are at least a couple of companies who are pondering to enter the PMP market or have entered already.

While Microsoft is believed to be planning to make a headway into the portable media player market with the launching of a wi-fi enabled PMP sometime this year, Philips has already entered the PMP market in India with the launching of its GoGear range of portable digital audio MP3 players.

"Mobile phone makers have their own compulsions with the fight more among themselves, by bringing in new features in their devices and retaining their customers. But mobile phones with MP3 players can never be a substitute for stand-alone audio MP3 players," said Gunjan Srivastava, director, Entertainment Solutions for Consumer Electronics Division of Philips India.

Philips, which initially launched its GoGear SA 1100 and SA 1110 portable digital audio MP3 players, is also planning to launch more hard-disk based audio and video products with higher memory capacity.