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June 20, 2005
Reigncom offers new U10, T20 and T30
Korea's largest digital music player maker, introduced three new products into the local market yesterday, including a model that provides music, radio, text and video games in a single device.
The company, recently threatened by increasing competition, has been attempting to diversify its products and tap a larger audience beyond the music player market.
"There has never been a music player quite like this, not from Apple, not from Sony," said Reigncom chief executive Joon Yang, at a Seoul news conference, referring to the company's new U10 MP3 player. Reigncom also released two new stand-alone MP3 players, the T20 and T30, which will hit the domestic markets in July.
"It's important to today's customers that the MP3 player provide features more than music," he said.
The U10 is a music player that also offers features such as radio, 3D graphic video-games, real-time images, photo slide show ability and text viewing. The MP3 player is integrated with a 2.2-inch LCD color screen, the largest among conventional models, that also doubles as a control pad. Users could operate the device by pressing icons that appears in the screen's four corners.
Reigncom plans to release U10 in the market during August, a traditional high-demand period. The 512 megabyte versions will be priced at 286,000 won ($283) and the 1 gigabyte models will be sold for 339,000 won.
"U10 epitomizes where we want to go in the future," said Yang, saying that the company will continue to develop convergence products with more multimedia functions.
Reigncom plans to strengthen its partnership with digital content developers and publishing companies to provide a larger content pool to its customers suing multimedia devices. The company will also launch an Internet portal that allows users to create and share content.
Reigncom said it will unveil five new models during the second-half of the year, including devices with enhanced video capabilities. The company is also considering developing devices that can receive television airwaves, targeting the country's expanding mobile television market.
Reigncom is the world's second-largest digital music player behind Apple Computer Inc. The company reported 452.8 billion won ($442 million) in sales last year, more than double the figure from 2003, with 63.4 billion won in operating profit and 43.2 billion won in net income.
With competition increasing in the digital music player market, Reigncom has recently struggled to sustain growth. The company reported a 1.3 billion won loss during the first-quarter this year, after it saw its marketing costs rise nearly three-fold year-on-year. Its product prices dropped around 20 percent during the same period.
The biggest threat is coming from larger electronics companies such as Apple and Samsung Electronics. Industry watchers estimate that Apple now has about 10 percent of the domestic MP3 player market, from less than five percent last year, moving into second-place behind Reigncom Co. Samsung Electronics, which claims it will be the world's largest MP3 player supplier by 2007, is also increasing marketing efforts.
Reigncom currently controls about 40 percent of the domestic MP3 player market, a sector it once had a 70 percent share, according to analysts.
Last week, Reigncom said that it would start developing portable video-game players, entering a market dominated by Sony Corp. and some handset makers. To overcome its lack of partnerships with software makers and console game providers, Reigncom plans to develop the products based on online games.
Considering that most online game publishers provide the games to customers for free and charge fees for item-purchasing, the strategy could give Reigncom an advantage in securing content, according to company officials.
Posted by mp3fan at June 20, 2005 4:53 PM