Competitors scramble for hot features as PMP/MP3 player market loses steam

SCOTTSDALE, USA: As the worldwide PMP/MP3 market matures, with shipment growth of only 5 percent in 2009, competitors are scrambling to add features such as touchscreens and Wi-Fi connectivity to re-ignite demand reports In-Stat.

Just a few years ago, the PMP/MP3 player market was among the strongest growth segments in the portable consumer electronic (CE) industry. Today, the market is stalled due to a perfect storm of weak consumer demand, a poor economic environment, a stalled replacement market, and competition from the iPhone and other audio/video-capable smartphones.

“Among the lone bright spots in the PMP market is Wi-Fi enabled PMPs,” says Stephanie Ethier, In-Stat analyst. “Unit shipments of Wi-Fi-enabled PMPs will grow more than four-fold by 2013 from the 14 million units shipped in 2008.”

Recent research by In-Stat found the following:

* Total worldwide shipments of PMP players will reach 225 million in 2009, with Asia Pacific representing the largest geographic market.
* The market is decidedly shifting to video-enabled devices. By 2013, only 15 percent of PMP players will be audio-only devices.
* Among the key PMP competitors are: Apple, Archos, Creative Technology, iRiver, ZVUE Corporation, Microsoft, SanDisk, Samsung, and Toshiba.
* The total semiconductor opportunity for PMP/MP3 player suppliers has peaked and will decline below $5 billion by 2013. NAND Flash and Video processors make up the majority of semiconductor revenue.
* Among the key PMP Semiconductor competitors are: Actions Semiconductor, NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, Toshiba Semiconductor, Freescale Semiconductor (SigmaTel).

CyberLink, NVIDIA showcase fast multimedia solutions optimized with CUDA

COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2009, TAIPEI, TAIWAN: CyberLink Corp. announced that it is showcasing multimedia solutions with NVIDIA CUDA technology at Computex 2009.

CyberLink has already implemented NVIDIA CUDA technology in several award-winning video software products including PowerDirector 7, PowerDVD 9, and the new video converter MediaShow Espresso.

“NVIDIA GeForce GPUs deliver the best image quality and great performance, a combination that always results in a great experience for our customers,” said Alice H. Chang, CEO of CyberLink Corp. “As the pioneering force behind GPU Computing, NVIDIA continues to revolutionize the PC industry by delivering accelerated software performance beyond today’s expectations, without sacrificing image quality.”

CyberLink showcased latest software solutions optimized with CUDA technology at Computex 2009 to the media and OEM partners in CyberLink’s suite at the Grand Hyatt Hotel.

“CyberLink has demonstrated an ongoing commitment to GPU computing by utilizing NVIDIA CUDA technology in their portfolio of multimedia solutions,” said Michael Steele, General Manager of Visual Consumer Solutions at NVIDIA. “The maturity and flexibility of the CUDA architecture is what has enabled CyberLink to deliver a wide range of compelling features on NVIDIA GPUs first. We anticipate many more innovative developments to come.”

Products optimized with CUDA:
PowerDVD 9 – The number 1 movie playback software improves CPU usage and efficiency by offloading complex tasks to the GPU when playing DVDs with TrueTheater HD.
PowerDirector 7 – The Award winning video editing software delivers massive performance gains when encoding HD video into H.264 format and accelerated rendering speeds of popular video effects.
MediaShow Espresso – The latest video conversion application converts videos in a fraction of the time, dramatically reducing the length of time converting an HD video for use on a portable media player.