In an article for Investor’s Business Daily, James Detar examines the spillover effect iPod’s success has had on companies who manufacture and sell related products. Some of these include PortalPlayer (makes the main processor in iPods, as well as some key firmware, or embedded software), Audible (provides content such as books, magazines and radio programs), Synaptics (provides software, chips and iPod’s click wheel), and Seagate Technology (supplies disk drives). This success is likely to continue to grow, as researcher iSuppli predicts that MP3 portable music player sales will more than double to US$10 billion in 2007 from $3.85 billion in 2004.
