Digital Audio Players set to boom Analyst group, In-Stat, is predicting that this is the year for digital audio players (the hard disk havers and the flash-baseddevices) to become even more popular. As you can imagine, music subscription services and just legit online music stores in general are keeping a close eye on this since it pretty muich controls their future.

A recent report from analyst group In-Stat forecasts that the market for hard-drive devices and flash-based devices will reach more than 104 million units worldwide by 2009, compared with the 27.8 million on record for 2004. It also notes that MP3 player sales reached $4.5 billion worldwide last year, an increase of 200% over 2003.

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