Apple's iPod has dominated the portable audio market so completely over the past few years. Giants like Sony and Microsoft where insignificant players in the mp3 players market.



Now, four years since the first iPod was introduced, the question remains: can the iPod's rivals finally get the first position from the market leader?

Let's take a look to the leader.

iPod is considered the most elegant music player on earth. Apple offers three levels of devices the iPod, mini, and Shuffle which can store between 120 and 15,000 songs.

iPod price is $99 to $449.

To see iPod modes just put in your browser Http://www.gadgets-club.com/2007/05/19/ipod-gadgets-models.

Let us see the rivals.

- Zune from Microsoft

The best Zune model has a 30GB hard disk drive that can store up to 7,500 songs, 25,000 pictures or 100 hours of video. The Zune experience centers around connection- connection to your library, connection to friends, connection to community and connection to other devices.

The price for Zune is $249.99.

- Sony's NW-HD3 Network Walkman from SONY

Sony's NW-HD3 Network Walkman offers excellent sound and a menu that's easy to navigate using a four-way directional button. The built-in 20 GB hard disc can hold the equivalent of 13,000 tracks or 900 CDs worth of music when using high quality ATRAC3plus audio compression technology

The company claims the player can go 30 hours without recharging.

Sony price: $349.

- Zen micro from Creative Technology

Zen micro is competing with iPod mini. Zen strengths are: the size only 3.3" high, captivating design and colors (is available in 10 electrifying colors), the vertical touch pad (ZEN Micro's vertical touch pad and touch sensitive controls are designed to be intuitive so that searching through songs or playlists is easy, quick and fun - try taking a cruise down this strip).

A new feature is the removable disk. Removable Disk lets you connect the player to the computer and directly copy the files you need.

The price for Zen micro with 6GB disk drive is $99.

- Sandisk SDMX4-4096 Sansa e260 4 GB MP3 Player

Sandisk SDMX4-4096 Sansa e260 is a ultra-thin digital audio/image/video player with 4 GB of flash memory compatible with MP3, WMA, and WMA-DRM10 music files. Keeps up to 1000 songs.

Sandisk Sansa e260 has high-strength because the back cover is made with an advanced Titanium alloy from Liquidmetal Technologies that is stronger than steel and highly resistant to scratches and wear.

The price for Sansa e260 is $130.

- Philips HDD6330 30 GB MP3 Playerultra-thin digital audio/image/video player with 4 GB of flash memory

Compact and stylish Philips HDD630 has an integrated 30 GB hard drive that can store up to 15,000 MP3 and WMA files (including DRM protected Plays For Sure WMA files from online stores and subscriber services)or 8,400 pictures. HDD630 has color LCD (220 x 220 pixels, 65 thousand colors, 8 lines of text) with the built-in photo viewer (compatible with JPEG image files).

The price for Philips HDD6330 is $159.99.

So who is winning so far?

According to best sellers list from Amazon.com the iPod products dominate. The first 5 mp3 players best sellers are made by Apple(Apple 30 GB iPod video Black, Apple 80 GB iPod, Apple 2 GB iPod Nano, Apple 1 GB iPod Shuffle and Apple 8 GB iPod Nano) Sandisk Sansa e260 comes on place no 6. The rest of top 10 best selling Mp3 players positions are taken by: Apple 30 GB iPod White, Apple 4 GB iPod Nano Silver, SanDisk Sansa M230 512 MB MP3 Player and SanDisk Sansa M240 1 GB MP3 Player.

Zune 30 GB Digital Media Player (Black) is no 13 in top sellers Mp3 players and Creative Zen Vision:M 30 GB MP3 and Video Player is no 16.

For now Apple' iPod is the number 1 choice when comes to Mp3 players. Microsoft and Creative are far behind and have a lot of catching up to do before they can really compete with Apple.