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>>Apple was WAY late to the MP3 player party.

If you think of the iPod as an MP3 player, sure. But I think Apple tapped a brand new market with the iPod: the "fashionable gadgets" market. Arguably, that's the main reason it was incredibly popular.



I'd say the Walkman gets that honor, if not some other product.

The iPod was popular because it was the first practical MP3 player. Take a look at the competition:

http://www.examiner.com/list/five-portable-mp3-players-that-...

You've got reasonably sized devices that could hold a few dozen megabytes, or impractical tanks that had real capacity. The iPod was the first to do both. It also had a user experience that was quite painless.




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