92% of new hard drive-based MP3 players sold are iPods

The NPD Group said on Tuesday that the iPod accounted for 92.1 percent of the market for hard drive-based music players, up from 82.2 percent a year ago (if that's not dominance, we don't know what is). Coming up secord and third were Creative Technology players (3.7%) and Digital Networks North America's Rio (3.2%).  While those numbers are no-doubt daunting for the followers, the NPD Group report did mention that there seems to be room for competition in the smaller player market currently topped by Apple's iPod Mini
(which is why Virgin and
Creative just rolled out their new 5GB players). The problem for the little guys, says the NPD Group, is that people looking for players in the smaller configuration appear to only know the iPod, with kids are asking their parents for iPods this year rather than just asking for MP3 players,
much like we begged our parents for a Nintendo in late late 80s rather than pleading with for a video game console.