By Richard Menta 8/20/08

Caught this latest update of the top MP3 player manufacturers from the Wall Street Journal. The provider of the data is, of course, NPD, a group whose figures we take with a grain of salt. No surprise here that Apple is number one in MP3, though with a market share that has grown from two-thirds market share to nearly three-out of four players. SanDisk remains at number two, but hey look...Microsoft's Zune line has moved into number three, albeit with a modest 4% share of the market. Still, that's better that the 2% held by Sony and Creative Labs. We are assuming that NPD is including portables that handle video too, simply because that would otherwise imply that Apple's shuffle, the only audio-only MP3 player in its line, has 71% of the market alone. Hey, we call PMPs MP3 players too, sometimes. Not totally accurate, but heck the name is MP3 Newswire.