Nearly half of the music players on the market are iPods

Apple's MP3 device is in the same phase as the Sony Walkman in its heyday when it accounted for 44% of the market with an estimated consumption of 30 million this year and 43 million next year.

The company closely followed by Creative also achieved only 16% market share. Overall, music player sales have doubled compared to 2004.

Eliminating the annoying problems with the iPod nano screen, Apple continues to succeed with the iPod video product and over 1 million copies of downloaded videos in just 20 days.

Other notable highlights this year are the first iTunes phone with the opposite reaction and the opening of Apple's podcast service.

Many rival companies have teamed up to push back Apple's sweep. Microsoft and MTV encouraged users to leave iTunes while Samsung joined hands with Napster, Yahoo and Microsoft to pressure the "Apple". Sony also heated up the digital music market by releasing software for streaming audio and video files to a PlayStation Portable via a USB cable.

Apple also had a few legal problems when Creative made a patent-related lawsuit in the music player and iPod users complained about the poor quality of the product. Its sales also fluctuate slightly when some studies suggest that wearing earphones regularly will make users deaf and health affected.