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The iPod is turning ten this year. It wasn’t the world’s first, cheapest or the best music player, but it has revolutionized the way we listened to music. Ten years later Samsung has introduced a new contender, the Galaxy Player. While the iPod has the strong backing of iTunes, Samsung is starting afresh with Android. Is there any hope in a Samsung/Android alliance being able to create a niche in the media player segment, a market which is also encroached on by smartphones and tablet PCs?
No other music players have been able to compete with the pinnacle of iPod versions, the iPod Touch which is not selling as a music player per se, but as a complete entertainment package with apps, games and books. An iPod Touch also provides access to the Internet and chatting with FaceTime. It’s an iPhone sans the mobile telephone functionality, although recently iPhone sales have been swallowing up iPod sales anyway. 
So with Apple’s devices and iTunes platform dominating the mobile music listening world, why would Samsung try and enter the market now? The reason is that Samsung has enjoyed super success with their Galaxy smartphone and tablet range across the globe. Samsung sold over 10 million handsets in the second half of 2010 and year on year sales were up by 438.9 percent in the final quarter. Samsung has tasted success in both the smartphone and tablet PC segment with its Galaxy brand giving the company confidence to launch a media player.
The Galaxy Player is big brother to the Galaxy S smartphone, featuring a stretched screen of 4-inch or 5-inch for better video playback, book reading and gaming. But the screen is no match compared to the retina display and 960 x 640 screen resolution of the iPod. But leaving aside the screen type, the Galaxy Player is better than the iPod Touch in most other specs. It has a 1GHz A8 processor, SGX540 GPU, more RAM, 3.2MP rear camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and expandable storage up to 32GB.
The Samsung Galaxy Player also has something special that none of old iPod versions had in the past and that’s Android Market. The Galaxy player provides access to nearly 200,000 paid and free apps from Android Market including games, eBooks and widgets. Like the iPod Touch the Galaxy Player offers access to the Internet and comes pre-installed with various Google apps and networking apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype and Qik. 
The critics will argue that the Galaxy Player lacks the iTunes ecosystem—iTunes store, sync and music player. But that’s achievable with some great alternatives in the Android sphere; there’s always an option to buy music from the Amazon MP3 store, Blockbuster and Netflix. The Android Market also has some advanced music players such as Power AMP and MixZing. There’s even a VLC player for Android in the pipeline.
Android fans also have an option to buy music from iTunes and sync their music, movies and playlists from their iTunes library via the DoubleTwist Android app. The DoubleTwist desktop client has an interface similar to iTunes with an integrated music player. It can import playlists, ratings and playcount from iTunes and also play MP3s stored on the SD card. There’s even an add-on called Airsync that facilitates a wireless import of iTunes playlists and podcasts on Android. Apparently there are over 1 million active users on Android already!
But the existence of a few good music players and iTunes syncing apps can’t guarantee success for the Galaxy Player. Microsoft Zune also had all, but failed in the long run. Google has realized that and is trying its best to strengthen the music functionality of Android. The search giant is said to be working on a music streaming app for Android 2.3 Gingerbread, to enable users to sync and surf their desktop music library from cloud-based Google music servers. This would be a big boost to Android and a threat to iTunes.
But the icing on the cake will be Samsung’s shanzhai’d iTunes or the Music hub for Galaxy Players. Samsung already boasts Media hub, a video portal with support for TV episodes and movies and a Reader Hub for eBooks, newspapers and magazines. It is now planning to introduce music subscriptions in the Galaxy interface with a fresh Music hub.
The Galaxy Player looks competent enough to challenge iPod domination, and like Apple, Samsung can boast the full repertoire of devices (smartphone, tablet and media player) that consumers today aim to own ... or then again, perhaps that will change as the devices converge further. Still, analysts have been talking about convergence into one all-purpose device for years and I still see consumers enjoying owning multiple devices that have cross-purposes. That debate aside, the Galaxy Player has all the right ingredients: Samsung hardware, Galaxy brand, Android apps and Android’s rising popularity.
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