User:Synthfiend/sandbox/Portable audio player history

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History[edit]

See also: Portable audio player

Early years[edit]

The immediate predecessor in the market place of the digital audio player was the portable CD player and prior to that, the personal stereo. In particular, Sony's Walkman and Discman are the ancestors of digital audio players such as Apple's iPod.[1]

British scientist Kane Kramer invented the first digital audio player,[2] the IXI, in 1979. The size of a credit card, the portable audio player featured a small LCD screen, navigation and volume buttons, and up to one hour of audio playback. Kramer filed for UK patent in 1981; UK patent 2115996 was issued in 1985, and U.S. patent 4,667,088 was issued in 1987.[3] A pre-production prototype was unveiled at the APRS Audio/Visual trade exhibition in October 1986, but following a 1988 boardroom dispute and failure to raise the £60,000 required to renew the patent resulted in the patent entering the public domain. While Kramer still owns the designs, the prototypes did not enter commercial production.[4][5]

1990s[edit]

AT&T FlashPAC Digital Audio Player

In 1996 AT&T developed the FlashPAC digital audio player which initially used AT&T Perceptual Audio Coding (PAC)[6] for music compression, but in 1997 switched to AAC.[7] At about the same time AT&T also developed an internal Web based music streaming service that had the ability to download music to FlashPAC.[8] AAC and such music downloading services later formed the foundation for the Apple iPod and iTunes.[9]

The first production-volume portable digital audio player was's The Audible Player (also known as MobilePlayer, or Digital Words To Go). Available for sale in January 1998 for US$200, it was designed specifically for manufacturer Audible.com's spoken word recordings, and only supported playback of digital audio in Audible's proprietary, low-bitrate format. The Audible Player had rudimentary controls and no display, and capacity was limited to 4 MB of internal flash memory, or about 2 hours of play, using a custom rechargeable battery pack.[10][11]

In 1997, Saehan Information Systems introduced the first portable MP3 player, marketed and sold in Asia as MPMan. The flash-based player was available with storage capacity of either 32 MB or 64 MB (6 or 12 songs) and had a LCD to display information about the song currently playing. In mid-1998, Saehan licensed the players to Eiger Labs for North American distribution, who rebranded them as the EigerMan F10 and F20.[12][13][14] In September of the same year, Diamond Multimedia introduced the Rio PMP300. Holiday sales of the Rio PMP300 exceeded expectations,[15] spurring interest and investment in the digital music industry.[16] Because of its notoriety as the target of a major lawsuit,[17] the Rio has been erroneously assumed to be the first digital audio player.[18]

In 1998, Compaq introduced the first hard drive based DAP using a 2.5" laptop drive, licensed to HanGo Electronics and sold as the PJB-100 Personal Jukebox. The player had an initial capacity of 4.8 GB, with an advertised capacity of 1200 songs.[19] In 2000, Creative also called their new player a 'jukebox' when they released the 6GB hard drive based Creative NOMAD Jukebox. Later players in the Creative NOMAD range used microdrives rather than laptop drives. Archos answered Creative's offering with the Jukebox 6000.

2000s[edit]

Various iPods, all of which have now been updated or discontinued
Main article: iPod

On 23 October 2001, Apple Computer unveiled the first generation iPod, a 5 GB hard drive based DAP with a 1.8" Toshiba hard drive and a 2" monochrome display. With the development of a spartan user interface and a smaller form factor, the iPod was initially popular within the Macintosh community. In July 2002, Apple introduced the second generation update to the iPod. It was compatible with Windows computers through Musicmatch Jukebox. In 2007, Apple introduced the iPod Touch, the first iPod with a multi-touch screen. Its media player was split into the Music and Videos apps.

In 2002, Archos released the first "portable media player" (PMP), the Archos Jukebox Multimedia[20] with a little 1.5" colour screen. Manufacturers have since implemented abilities to view images and play videos into their devices. The next year, Archos released another multimedia jukebox, the AV300, with a 3.8" screen and a 20GB hard drive.

In 2004, Microsoft attempted to take advantage of the growing PMP market by launching the Portable Media Center (PMC) platform. It was introduced at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show with the announcement of the Zen Portable Media Center,[21] which was co-developed by Creative. The Microsoft Zune series would later be based on the Gigabeat S, one of the PMC-implemented players.

Main article: SanDisk Sansa

In May 2005, flash memory maker SanDisk entered the PMP market with the Sansa line of players, starting with the e100 series, and then following up with the m200 series, and c100 series. 

Apple Inc. hired Kramer as a consultant and presented his work as an example of prior art in the field of digital audio players during their litigation with Burst.com almost two decades later.[22] In 2008 Apple acknowledged Kramer as the Inventor of the Digital audio player[2][23]

Samsung SPH-M2100, the first mobile phone with built-in MP3 player was produced in South Korea in August 1999.[24][25] Samsung SPH-M100 (UpRoar) launched in 2000 was the first cell phone to have MP3 music capabilities[26] in the US market. The innovation spread rapidly across the globe and by 2005, more than half of all music sold in South Korea was sold directly to mobile phones and all major handset makers in the world had released MP3 playing phones. By 2006, more MP3 playing mobile phones were sold than all stand-alone MP3 players put together. The rapid rise of the media player in phones was quoted by Apple as a primary reason for developing the iPhone. In 2007, the installed base of phones that could play media was over 1 billion.[citation needed]

  1. ^ Southerton, Dale (2011). Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture. SAGE Publishing. p. 515. ISBN 9780872896017.
  2. ^ a b "Kane Kramer - The Inventor of the Digital Audio Player". www.kanekramer.com. Archived from the original on 27 May 2017.
  3. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 29 December 2016. Retrieved 29 December 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. ^ "Briton Invented iPod, DRM and On-Line Music in 1979". wired.com. Archived from the original on 27 March 2017.
  5. ^ "Apple admit Briton DID invent iPod, but he's still not getting any money". dailymail.co.uk. Archived from the original on 29 June 2012.
  6. ^ J.D.Johnston, D. Sinha, S. Dorward, and S. R. Quackenbush, AT&T Perceptual Audio Coding (PAC), pp. 73–82, in Collected Papers on Digital Audio Bit-Rate Reduction, N. Gilchrist and C. Grewin, eds, Audio Engineering Society Publications, 1996
  7. ^ J.D.Johnston, J. Herre, M. Davis, and U.Gbur, MPEG-2 NBC Audio – Stereo and Multichannel Coding Methods, Proceedings of the 101st Convention, 1996 November, Los Angeles
  8. ^ Onufryk, Peter; Snyder, Jim (1997). Consumer Devices for Networked Audio. Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics. Vol. 1. pp. SS27–SS32.
  9. ^ Early Digital Music Player – AT&T FashPAC. CNN Business Week 7 March 1997. Archived from the original on 10 May 2018.
  10. ^ "Audible Player Will Mark the First Time Consumers Can Access RealAudio Programming Away from the PC". Archived from the original on 18 January 1998. Retrieved 20 February 2014., Press Release from Audible Inc., archived by archive.org 18 January 1998
  11. ^ "The Audible Player for sale". Archived from the original on 18 January 1998. Retrieved 20 February 2014.
  12. ^ "Ten years old: the world's first MP3 player". The Register. Archived from the original on 8 August 2016.
  13. ^ Verganti, Roberto (12 August 2009). Roberto Verganti, Design-Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Thing Mean. Harvard Business Press, 2009. ISBN 9781422136577. Archived from the original on 18 October 2017.
  14. ^ Van Buskirk, Eliot. "Introducing the world's first MP3 player". CNET. Archived from the original on 21 January 2009.
  15. ^ Menta, Richard. "Collecting MP3 Portables – Part 1". Antique Radio Classified. Archived from the original on 7 December 2004.
  16. ^ "Diamond Multimedia Announces Rio PMP300 Portable MP3 Music Player" (Press release). Harmony Central. 14 September 1998. Archived from the original on 6 December 2007. Retrieved 5 December 2007.
  17. ^ Hart-Davis, Guy; Rhonda Holmes (2001). MP3 Complete. San Francisco: Sybex. p. 613. ISBN 0-7821-2899-8.
  18. ^ "Bragging rights to the world's first MP3 player". CNET article on the first manufactured digital audio players.
  19. ^ Yoshida, Junko; Margaret Quan (18 August 2000). "OEMs ready to roll on jukeboxes for Net audio". EE Times. p. 1. Archived from the original on 6 September 2008. Retrieved 5 December 2007.
  20. ^ "ARCHOS Generation 5 Available Worldwide" (PDF) (Press release). Archos. 12 September 2007. Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 October 2007. Retrieved 5 December 2007.
  21. ^ Van Buskirk, Eliot (9 January 2004). "Microsoft visualizes portable video". CNET. Archived from the original on 25 February 2008. Retrieved 30 December 2007.
  22. ^ British Man Says He Invented iPod in 1979 Archived 2 February 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Fox News Channel, 9 September 2008
  23. ^ "Apple admits it didn't invent the iPod". cnet.com. 7 September 2008. Archived from the original on 29 December 2016.
  24. ^ "SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS UNVEILS SPH-M2100 PHONE". Telecompaper BV. August 1999. Archived from the original on 18 April 2013. ()
  25. ^ Luigi Lugmayr (December 2004). "First MP3 Mobile Phone already in 1999 on the market". I4U NEWS. Archived from the original on 17 April 2013. ()
  26. ^ "Samsung launched the World's first MP3 mobile phone – iMobile". Archived from the original on 17 April 2013. ()
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