![]() ![]() * - This price is a reflection of major OEM market pricing as of 3/8/05. #Rio mp3 player driversMain Cost Drivers only three representing approximately 86% of total materials cost Rio Forge Sport 512MB MP3 Player Cost Analysis These assumptions are used in our cost calculations (details below). We have assumed, for the purposes of this cost assessment, that the the Rio Forge will be produced over an approximate 2 year life cycle with a total lifetime volume production of 5 Million units (128, 256, and 512MB combined). While the iPod's use of a built-in custom Lithium-Ion Polymer cell makes the overall device more compact but who really wants to have to deal with the end of life issues and costs the battery replacement will entail? (Racket alert!) The Rio's use of a AAA cell is pragmatic - and frankly at twice the playtime of the iPod - pretty impressive from a mere Alkaline cell. This last 'feature' is really a user perception as to whether a built-in battery is a 'plus' or not. The Rio has a display (a pretty important feature when a player can store hundreds of songs), an FM radio with the ability to record FM programs (an extra vis-a-vis the Shuffle), the ability to expand via memory card, and finally the Rio's use of a very simple and common AAA cell with 20 hours of play time (vs 12 on the Shuffle). The iPod is extremely compact when compared with the Rio, but makes a lot of tradeoffs that the Rio has not made. The Rio Forge Sport and iPod Shuffle players are different in many respects both from a feature point of view, but also internally. All of the Forge players have expandable memory through an SD/MMS memory card slot, unlike the iPod Shuffle which we analyzed simultaneously with this model. The Forge is offered in three memory increments from 128MB to 512MB, with this model representing the high end of all Rio players currently. The Rio Forge Sport is one of seven flash player models currently offered by Rio. Currently, the 'sweet spot' for the market is still 256M Byte players, with 512M and up representing more the leading edge.įor the overall market, ISuppli projects total Flash mp3 player sales to be approximately 41 M units in 2005, and 55 M Units in 2006 (with another 43M units of HDD models sold during the course of 20). ![]() ![]() Flash music (mp3 and other format) players are, obviously, a booming segment, and are expected to produce approximately $3.8B in revenues in 2005, and expanding rapidly over the coming years. ![]()
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