The Story Behind Mp3 Players

The Story Behind Mp3 Players
A digital audio player, famously known as MP3 player, is an electronic device that stores, manages and plays audio files. It is considered that MP3 players are the successors to CD and MiniDisc players. MP3 players are usually grouped by storage media such as flash-based players, hard drive-based players or digital Jukeboxes, and MP3 CD players. So how did it all start for MP3 players?

In 1997 the first mass production of MP3 players took place through the initiative of SaeHan Information Systems. It was domestically marketed as “MPMan” player. During the summer of 1998, Eiger Labs got the license from the South Korean company and offered it to the North American market. They labeled it as “Eiger Labs MPMan F10”. After a few months, Diamond Multimedia launched “Rio PMP300”. It was a huge success throughout the holiday season. As a result, there were an increased interest and investments in digital music. At the same time, the said unit received various lawsuits thus mistakenly believed to be as the first MP3 player.


The succeeding year, Compaq introduced the first hard drive based MP3 player through a 2.5” laptop drive. It claimed that it can hold a maximum of 1200 songs. In October 2001, Apple Inc. launched the first generation of its iPod family, a 5-GB hard drive based MP3 player using a 1.8” Toshiba drive. The next year, it unveiled its second generation iPod. The iPod series experienced tremendous success all over the world and thus hold the top spot in the MP3 players market.
By: Ronaldo fisher