The AP has published a story on the music player market that focuses on all the recent iPod competitors entering the space. The story quotes NPD analyst Stephen Baker as saying that while Apple is likely to maintain its current status of market share leader, the new competitors are likely to eat into that share. From the story:

"Thereis no way they could sustain more than 70 percent share over time," NPD analyst Stephen Baker said of Apple. "Thatis very very difficult to do especially when the product is based on a commoditized component, the hard drive."

Hereis how the competition stacks up, according to Baker: "Rio has a long history in the market. Creative has a strong pipeline of products. You canit count Samsung out. We canit forget Sony - that theyill eventually find some market for these products with a strong design and distribution channel, and Dell will bludgeon everybody with price."

But the challengers face a daunting task as they battle to nip at Appleis reign. In August - NPDis latest available figures - Rio and Creative ranked a very distant second and third place in US market share, with 2.4 percent and 2.3 percent respectively.

There is much more in the full story, and we recommend it as an interesting read. It offers a fairly comprehensive overview of the current market.