The global portable music player market is expected to be worth $58 bln by 2008. IDC says MP3 sales are continuing to boom worldwide with an expected compound annual growth rate of 20% per year for the next four years. The worldwide portable flash player market exploded in 2003 and is expected to grow from 12.5 mln units in 2003 to over 50 mln units in 2008, fuelled by falling flash memory costs and the availability of players at multiple storage capacities. IDC says Apple, which has been a portable jukebox market leader since introducing the iPod in late 2001 and iPod mini in early 2004, will see new competition in the portable jukebox player market during the forecast period from vendors offering devices based on smaller hard drive form factors.