Feb
28
iPod Remains Top MP3 Player, Music Phones Viewed as Superior to MP3 Players
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In our survey over the first two weeks of February of broad line electronics retailers we found that the Apple iPod continues to lead the market for MP3 players. The Apple iPod was seen as the “best” MP3 player by 75% of our respondents (up from 71% in our December survey) while Microsoft Zune player was seen as “best” by the remaining 25% (up from 11% in our December survey). Interestingly Creative Zen, Sandisk and other vendors were shut out in this category. We asked about the cheapest MP3 players in the market as well in our survey and found the Best Buy brand Insignia player cited as the “cheapest” by 25% of our respondents (note that roughly 50% of our survey responses were from Best Buy stores) and 21% cited the Sandisk Sansa line of MP3 players. Brands such as Nextar, Creative, Isonic and iLo were also mentioned as being the “cheapest”. We also asked respondents to tell us if they viewed a stand alone MP3 player or a combination music phone to be the better device. 50% of respondents stated that a music phone is the better device while 39% said that a stand alone MP3 player was better. This is a shift from our December survey where more respondents preferred the MP3 players to a music phone by a margin of 49% to 42%. Storage capacity and sound quality were the primary elements cited by MP3 player supporters while convenience and the 2:1 benefits of the music phone were mentioned by those preferring the music phones.
Jun
11
Linksys (Cisco) Dominates Major Chains Recommendation for “Best” Wi-Fi Router.
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We conducted a 55 store survey on wi-fi routers. We asked three simple questions:
What is the best wi-fi router?
What is the cheapest wi-fi router?
What is the fastest wi-fi router you have?
The answers were not surprising on the surface but a little digging offers some interesting finding. The “Best” wi-fi router was deemed to be Linksys by 26 out of 55 stores (47%) we called. D-Link was the number two brand with 12 out of 55 (22% ) recommending it as “best”. Netgear was the only other brand to get mentioned more than once with 8 responses out of 55 (15%). While these results on the surface might be expected, we checked responses by store and found that 70% of Best Buy and Circuit City reps recommended Linksys while only 17% of employees at independent electronics or smaller chain stores recommended the Linksys router.
On the topic of cheapest wi-fi router to buy, Netgear and Belkin were ranked number 1 and 2. Netgear was the cheapest at 27% of stores (15/55) while Belkin was cheapest at 16% (9/55). Linksys was reported as the cheapest at 15% of stores (8/55). We saw more brands pop up in this survey area around the cheapest wi-fi routers including Airlink, Trendnet, Network Everywhere, Borscht and Netcomm.
The final question on the fastest wi-fi router brought back many answers around the G and N versions of 802.11. Top speeds were reported to be 54Mbs (most often cited) to 225Mbps (for the Apple Airport) and beyond. Some respondents claimed speeds up to 300Mbs. It is fairly clear that awareness of new G and N standards are thoroughly in the marketplace but none of these newer standards based routers are being mentioned as “best” or “cheapest”. The shift for consumers to G and above for wi-fi appears to still be on the horizon despite the products clearly moving into the retail sales channel across almost all retailers.
We’ll re-run this survey later this summer to see if we pick up any shifts in market share among the top brands or changes in allegiance from the likes of Best Buy and Circuit City.