Portable Audio Industry Goes BOOM

Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) conducted a market study that led to a surprising result. The sales of portable audio devices will exceed this year the sales of home audio devices, for the first time. Also, it is very likely that portable audio devices sales go higher than home audio and car audio sales together.

This year, the sales of big portable audio devices like boomboxes are significantly low, while MP3 players rose by 255 percent (!). In august, the level of MP3 players sales was at over $1.9 billion. Comparing the figures, home audio devices sales dropped 19,8 percent, having a sales level of $1.25 billion.

It is a known fact that iPod brought this portable revolution to the market, but this year no extremely appealing home audio or car audio systems were on the market in order to attract lots of users.

With sales dropping, the home audio industry needs a new disc format in order to succeed. The next generation disc format winner will probably revive the market, and also bring new audio formats and codecs that users will rush to experience. Both HD DVD and Blu-Ray have the power to bring the home audio market back into the public eyes. We just have to wait and see which of the two will succeed.