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by Kevin (Kilmo) Kang, Korea

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What will be the upcoming trend of PMP in 2008?

Dec 31, 2007 17:50

PMP stands for portable multimedia player and was created by Korean manufacturers based on the Linux OS when the Microsoft promoted its PMC (portable media center) products based on Windows' portable OS. It's been two to three years since the first PMP player was released.

There are two different PMP definitions going on between Korean and international users. Here are the two definitions.

1. PMP (Korean): Player that has the capability to playback various video formats without going through video converting.
2. PMP (international users): Player that has capability to playback video files and a suitable size of LCD to watch movies on.

It shows that Koreans differentiate between the PMP and MPEG-4 player. You can easily find some of review sites pointing to Apple iPod video and touch as portable media players. For example, the Apple iPod series including touch, the Creative Zen series, Cowon D2, iriver Clix, Samsung P2 are MPEG-4 players which require converting all the video files to the MPEG-4 format to watch on these players. Cowon A2, A3, Q5W and Archos products are PMPs which don't have to convert the video files. This is really convenient to use if you have tried or used them.

However, we've seen a number of UMPC products in 2007 that will be sharing their target customers with PMP. The main purpose of customer usage will differentiate the PMP or UMPC for watching movies or business matters. This shows that PMP will face a tough season in 2008.

Let's cut out the introduction. I'd like to assume and expect these kinds of PMP in 2008.

1. PMP with accelerated chipsets.
There aren't many chipsets available for the PMP manufacturers. Mainstream will be RMI's Alchemy chipset and TI's DaVinci chipset. Both chipsets have been released in the market for many years, but have mainly been used by Korean PMP manufacturers. At the moment, TI's DaVinci chipset has more powerful audio, while the video codec supports compare with RMI's Alchemy. Alchemy, on the other hand, has the advantage of being able to undertake multitasking processes, so a number of manufacturers with WinCE for their OS have chosen Alchemy as the main chipset.

TI's DaVinci, Cowon A3, Tvus HM960, Maxian D900, RMI's Alchemy,Cowon Q5W, iStation U43, NetForce2, Viliv X2 AIO... all the listed products were released in 2007, with Cowon A3 and Q5W introduced just a month ago. It will be exciting to see what other powerful chipsets will appear for the PMP manufacturers and how those manufacturers will differentiate their products given the same conditions of chipset performance.

2. PMP from settop box manufacturers
Korea also the leading country of settop box products with Humax, Kaon, Topfield, Homecast, etc. These local manufacturers are about to get into the PMP market, and Humax and Kaon have released their first PMP in the Korean market. They have great knowledge of codec supports through settop box developments and this will differentiate them from existing PMP manufacturers. However, if they don't introduce new technology and features on their PMPs, it won't be easy to attract customers since these brands are not well-known to PMP consumers.

3. PMP with home media entertainment features
I've mentioned above that settop box manufacturers are entering the PMP market. Their main aim to entering this market is to make a device that can communicate and download content from their settop boxes and bring these content outdoors via their portable devices. Of course, TiVo should be working in the same direction, I guess.

Also, the PMP usually has a HDD as its storage since it takes on high-capacity files, which means a PMP has to have enough storage to contain various content in order to perform as a portable home media entertainment player. You don't have to purchase a highly rated and expensive home media center for your living room. A PMP can do video and audio out to your TV to watch movies on the bigger screens at home, with the technology to output high enough video quality and powerful audio.

The main key points will be TV and audio output performance and the graphic user interface with a large capacity of video and audio content. These content should include related data like album/DVD cover art and introductions. Otherwise, this product will be difficult to fit into the market as a portable home media entertainment device.

4. PMP with flash memory and HDD
PMP started with 20GB and 30GB at the beginning, but now the mainstream is 30GB and 60GB. Since, 1.8-inch became mainstream for PMP storage, large capacities weren't available until Apple video classic came out recently. Still, those 80GB and 160GB HDDs are available by Apple only. Archos released high capacities once before but used a 2.5-inch HDD which will make the device bigger as well as weightier.

Some people assume that flash memory will replace PMP storage soon, but the current high-capacity one is 16GB by Apple and Creative and the price isn't cheap. The 16GB storage is able to contain 10 to 11 movies. I don't think this is good enough for a PMP. Of course, booting speed and safety may get better, but still storage capacity is important for customers and so is the price.

5. PMP and UMPC in one device
PMPs face a tough moment by UMPCs, both devices having similar concepts and parts which should be common for the mobile folks. They usually want to watch movies and listen to music while outside via their portable device and UMPCs and PMPs have the same features. The only difference between the two devices will be the ability to have office and business tool operations. Since the latest PMP, the Cowon Q5W, has Wi-Fi ability to check your emails and to view office files, this gap has really closed. Now the only difference is the main OS and whether it's WinCE or Linux and Win XP or Vista.

The price gap between the two products is less than a few hundred dollars now. PMP manufacturers are almost ready to enter the UMPC markets and those led by major international brands. This will be a tough competition for both parties. One side has big brand names and strong distribution channels but the other side has talent and know-how of a young generation's portable player needs.

I assume UMPCs can have a better position if it's possible to offer instant power on like some of laptops to enjoy MP3 files without turning on your laptop, as well as video features. Plus selling the products without an OS or with Linux and giving customers the choice to pick their own OS will reduce the retail price of UMPCs.

However, the PMP market is likely to expand in 2008 since people have started to like bigger LCD products that can perform great video playback anywhere and the price is competitive compared with the UMPC's high retail prices.

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About Kevin (Kilmo) Kang

Kevin (Kilmo) Kang is a self-professed IT-savvy guy who's been having the time of his life making tech deals with new business partners in the Asia-Pacific areas. Like every Korean, he's gadget-crazy and is glad he lives in a country with one of the fastest-growing tech markets in the world. His taste for international work, however, arose from a nine-year stay in New Zealand where he fortunately made more friends than there are sheep.