Market for personal media players is poised to fall

The worldwide semiconductor market for portable media players, or PMPs, is poised to drop significantly from $7.5 billion in 2008 to $4.6 billion in 2013, representing a negative compound annual growth rate of minus 9 percent, according to a new forecast from IDC.

Headquartered in Framingham, IDC is a market intelligence research firm.

"A mature market, the economic slowdown, growing similarity with mobile phones and mobile Internet devices (MIDs), and inevitable cannibalization all contribute to the shrinking semiconductor opportunity in PMPs," IDC said in a press release.

"As PMPs have grown in capabilities, the dividing line has blurred between multimedia phones and MIDs," Ajit Deosthali, IDC's research manager for short range wireless semiconductors, said in a statement. "Moving forward, one should expect the semiconductor players to focus on the larger multimedia phones and growing opportunity in MIDs."
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)