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Importing electronic devices from China and other Asian countries is a very profitable business and lately the number of MP4 player wholesalers has skyrocketed. Why? Well, first of all because the largest consumer of electronic goods, the US market, is getting ready for the next step in portable entertainment – MP4 players. The second reason for this new interest in MP4 player wholesalers and MP4 imports is that early product sampling and negotiations with the wholesaler could give US vendors and edge when the customers come rushing in to purchase MP4 players. You can checkout some of the newest MP4 models direct from China here: http://www.ebest24.co.uk/products/audio-multimedia/mp4-player-index.html

MP4 player samples

Although MP4 technology is fairly new, there are already dozens of MP4 video player manufacturers. One of the best ways to determine how valuable their product is and how reliable your business partner proves to be is by requesting samples of their products. Of course, there is no written rule for this process, and in most cases this will have to be negotiated on an individual basis. Small US-based vendors may have a hard time receiving free samples from different Chinese manufacturers and other MP4 player wholesalers. In such cases, it is up to the US vendor to decide whether they want to make a small investment and purchase several units or if they wish to sit back and watch how the market is evolving.

What to look for in a MP4 player product?

One of the key elements to reaching a wide and highly targeted consumer market is to anticipate their preference for the new products. In other words, you should not import tens of thousands of cheap and low-quality MP4 players if the public is looking for higher prices but better features and image quality.

Here are some features of a top quality MP4 player that should appeal to a large audience:


• Memory: Built-in 1.8 inches 20GB Hard Disc, for example, would give you large capacity for storing whole movies in high resolution.
• Connection: USB 2.0 for faster transfer speed.
• Video playing: MPEG-4 format including DivX.
• Resolution: QCIF/CIF/1/2D/2/3D and D1
• Music Playing: MP3 / WMA formats
• TV Recording: AV input / Video record
• Picture format: JPEG and GIF
• Internal power: rechargeable lithium ion battery
• Acceptable battery time: Video - 3 hours, Audio - 5 hours
• Accessories: USB cable, stereo earphones, installation CD, charger


Finding a reliable wholesaler

As with any type of business, you want to make sure that your business partner is reliable and trustworthy. For retailers looking for an overseas partner and an import business, the best solution is to go with a reputable supplier of MP4 players. While determining “reputation” is difficult, you should look for customer feedback, check out their website and definitely give them a call. A very well known source you can find is this chinese wholesaler: http://www.ebest24.com/

You should be looking at China in particular for the lowest wholesale prices for MP4 and MP3 players. That's where they are all made these days. Professional MP4 player wholesalers located in China will always have an English translator ready to assist you and provide you with more details. Make sure to ask for samples and clarify all import transactions properly before you sign any contract. It is also advisable to consult other retailers and electronic product vendors to see who they partnered with in their business.

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It is universally acknowledged that the MP4 players are getting more and more popular in the market both at home and abroad. Since MP4 can not only do whatever MP3 functions, but also endowed with camera, interactive download functions and so on. It is growing up to be a gold mine coveted by all the farseeing manufacturers. Actually, MP4 can be also called a PVP (Personal Video Player) or PMP (Portable Media Player) domestically in China. It is now welcomed by modern people, especially young white collars for its stylish design, diversified functions, personal care and esteem for individual values.

Comparative Statement of MP4 and MP3

Sales of the MP4 player, the successor to the still popular MP3, are obviously gaining momentum in the electronics market. Then in what aspects might MP4 be superior to MP3 and what are their respective advantages? At first, an MP4 player is an apparatus that plays MPEG-4 files. Though there isn't any clear definition of its functions, many manufacturers classify it as sort of multimedia player. It can easily download and play video files via the USB. Then compared with MP3, an MP4 player can provide higher definition video effects, better acoustic fidelity, a more advanced compression technology and easier access to many other media units.

Despite all the advantages that MP4s provide, MP3 players are still occupying a big slice of the market for three reasons: MP3 has been a very popular music format, which makes it difficult for MP4 to break through; MP3 files already occupy a large amount of internet space with very fast and convenient download speeds; MP3s are cheaper than MP4s. Yet MP4 is gaining momentum and gradually becoming the most popular standard for digital players, especially for portable playback of video files. It also surpasses MP3s in quality with its powerful functions undoubtedly. It can readily connect to TVs, projectors and other monitors to present high definition films.

MP4 Market Draws Great Attention

As we all know, the first MP4 player in the market was released by Archos, a specialized French manufacturer, in 2002. With the cultivation of the MP4 makers lead by Archos, the market of 1000 million RMB emerges in 2005, which surprised most of the industrial pals. Encouraged by this excitement, many domestic makers, beside of some Japanese giants like Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi, are digging this gold mine in succession, including: Tsinghua Unisplendour, Little Swan, Changhong, aigo, MobiNote and so on. Almost all AV giants, together with some software titans or IT manufacturers, have set foot in the region of MP4s.

In fact, the MP4 market in EU and America has reached a high level of 4000 million euros in 2004, while the market in China is only RMB 200 million at the same time, most of which are gained from the retailing market. However, the figure has risen up by 310% in 2005, ended in RMB 1000 million. Estimation from a professional institution shows the market in China will end up in RMB 10000 million in 2008, thus making a great breakthrough.

An MP4 player mainly consists of main chip, memory, display screen, semiconductor components and software system. Although the main chip costs less comparably, its power determines the ultimate play effect. Therefore, in the main chip field, a couple of manufacturers have launched relevant products targeting at MP4. The amazing growth in MP4 market has drawn a great attention from lots of makers, ranging from parts suppliers to MP4 terminal makers, among which including a group of giants such as Intel, AMD, TI and Samsung and so on.

In the upstream field, due to the R&D difficulties for MP4, a large proportion of MP4 products in current market are designed by foreign makers or markers from Taiwan. For Chinese domestic markers, they have to follow the model of Parts Supplier plus Design House. Chinese domestic design houses may make most of their advantages on design ability and low operational cost, thereby to occupy a market share. In the currently Chinese MP4 market, there are more than 40 brands, with over 70 models. The domestic brands far outstripped foreign ones in quantity, similar to MP3 market. And the Chinese domestic makers can be divided into two groups: one is self-design and manufacturing with the parts purchased, another one is simply assembling.

The first MP4 designed by a Chinese company using its own proprietary technologies was put on sale in Shenzhen on Monday. The maker, Shenzhen Techno Science Technology R&D Co., spent one year working out its own operating system, an embedded multimedia processing software, for the MP4. Shenzhen Techno's operating system has a better compatibility with documents of different formats, including .asf, .wmv, .avi, .wav, .swf, MPEG-1, MP4 and .rm and .rmvb, which are popular online. The MP4 has a 20G mini hard disk and a battery that can work five hours. It can also be used as a digital camera and a digital video camera. It was the very first time for a Chinese company to develop and patent a MP4. So the company doesn't have to pay patent fees to foreign companies but can sell its patent authorization to other MP4 makers now. Now, it has received orders from MP4 makers from Panama and Turkey.

2005: The Year Zero for MP4 Industry in China

Statistics from a domestic institution shows the sales volume of MP4s in 2004 was only 40000 pcs, while the first half of 2005 has surpassed this achievement. Thus the year 2005 is considered to be the year zero for MP4 industry in China. Besides, the annual increasing rate between 2005 and 2009 will maintain an astonishing speed over 100%.

At the very inception of China’s MP4 industry in 2003, there were few brands and models, most of which were from French marker of ARCHOS. The second half of 2004 witnessed a large-scale inflow of companies into China mainland market from South Korea, Taiwan and other regions and countries, meanwhile, a great deal of home brands were also emerging very soon. The first half of 2005 saw a burst of MP4 terminal market, the MP4 models launched in this period accounted for about 51.9% of models in existence. Global MP4 average price is expected to around at US $300 in 2006, the market start take off.

Due to the constant price decrease of flash memory and hard disk memory, and number increase of terminal makers, MP4 price will continual decline. 2004 saw a most sharp decrease in MP4 price worldwide, both of flash memory MP4 and hard disk MP4, all dropped over 10% on average. Hard disk MP4 will keep the decline level for a period, whereas flash memory MP4 would be on a slow downward comparably. The acceptable price of USD $300 will be a stimulus for the global market booming in 2006, factors restrict the development would be gradually disappeared, accordingly, global MP4 shipment would increase to over 2.3 million in 2006, from 0.3 million in 2004. It will grow to be the fourth biggest consumer hotspot followed MP3, digital camera and DV.

Though the industry is currently fragmented, the consolidation that a single technical standard brings is sure to make for exciting development. While other formats and versions come and go, MPEG-4 will safeguard multimedia content for a secure future. And of course, resources saved in encoding, hosting and storing media can be better used to create a wider library of digital media, which benefits the entire Internet community. MPEG-4 was finalized in 1998 and became an international standard in 2000. Whereas the MP3 industry in China has suffered from the “cold snap” of price, some related state departments are planning to make a national criterion for MP4 by the end of this year so as to standardize this industry.

Forecast of MP4’s Tomorrow

In a word, 2005-2006 is regarded as Advance Users MP4 market, the mass MP4 market would be startup in 2007. According to RIC (a research institute), the year of 2005 is the startup year for Chinese MP4 market, a sizable percentage of the advance users who prefer watching mobile video start to buy MP4 products, the turnout is expected to increase two times than 2004, up to 78 thousand sets. The year of 2006 will remain for the advance users market, resulting from the factors such as price sensitive buyers, lack of content and slow product cognition and so on. The mass market will be formed in 2007, and then into a mature period, the increase rate of shipment will gradually decline from the year of 2008 to 2009.

On the one hand, considering the low consumption level and comparatively high price sensitive buyers in China, flash memory MP4 will enjoy a higher market share in China than in world market. This trend will be increasingly evident until 2008, which benefits the popularity of MP4 inChina. From the year of 2009, the market share of flash memory MP4 inChina is expected to decline due to the fast price decline of hard disk MP4.

On the other hand, MP4 is not likely to overspread the existed market as MP3 do in a short period due to the technological barriers and comparatively higher prices. Furthermore, some industrial insiders believe that the higher price and the foreign-monopolized core technology lead to the high cost of investment in MP4s making for most domestic manufacturers, therefore, it is still an uneasy task for MP4 to overtrump MP3 at present time. But for tomorrow, who knows?

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MP3 is a technology that virtually every modern computer user has used or has at least heard about. It is the most popular form of audio encoding, producing small yet high-quality audio files that can be easily transmitted over the internet or distributed on portable media like cdrom-s or USB drives. But not everyone knows about MP4, which, as its name suggests, is the successor to and improvement over MP3.


If you thought portable multimedia players were only good for music, you need to think again. For nowadays it seems like audio isn't enough. People want visuals too. Audio players are old-fashioned. What you need is a video player that you can carry with you to work, to the park, on the bus, to the rail station, the pub or coffee shop, and even on short flights. Now wherever you go, your favorite collection of movies will always be with you. Yes, I'm talking about MP4 players, the revolutionary new crop of gadgets for carrying and streaming media, a technology that finally makes it possible to distribute paid video online quickly and painlessly.
MP4 uses high-quality, intensively researched codecs to achieve great compression while retaining video quality, which can be as high as the quality experienced in DVD movies. So though the screen of the average portable MP4 player is quite small, usually between 1.5 inches and 2.5 inches diagonally, the high resolution and color capacity, combined with the enviable quality of most well-encoded MP4 videos, ensures that you shall have a satisfactory personal video-watching experience.

In order to be successful, an MP4 player must achieve the right balance between portability and functionality. You need to have all the features that make it an enjoyable experience to watch video on it, yet if it becomes too bloated in terms of size or weight it will no longer be useful as a portable multimedia companion. The average MP4 player has a disk capacity to hold around four to six full length movies, and enough battery to allow you to play video non-stop for more than a couple of hours. Yet they are small and light enough to be carried around easily in your pocket or handbag, or hung from a chain around your neck.

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MP4 players, also called personal video players or multimedia players, are portable devices that play MP4 video files. They play movies using the mp4 file format/standard. Could they become the next big consumer gadget?For a long time now, MP3 players have been one of the hottest selling portable music players on the market. They have changed the way we make, listen to and store music. These players use the mp3 file format (mpeg 1 layer 111). MP4 has been heralded by some as the next big thing. This is because of the versatility and quality of the MP4 file. MP4 stands for MPEG 4. This format can be used for video and audio and it produces a very high quality sound and picture. It can be used with many wireless devices.MP4 players play video using this file format. Many can record from a tv or dvd player or even from the internet and then play back the video or movie at the users convenience. Some can store pictures as well. A good mp4 player will come with a decent amount of memory to store the sometimes large mp4 files. They are priced around $200-300.Though they are gaining popularity, it remains to be seen if they will one day be as well known as the super famous mp3 player

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I love my iPod, but I do not love that it's basically a PC accessory. No PC (or Mac) nearby means no content on the iPod, and no updates. There's got to be a better way.

I've previously covered a company, Music Gremlin, that's building a Wi-Fi-enabled music player. And at the D4 conference this morning, a new company, Zing, is rolling out a service that enables other companies (like its partners Sirius and Yahoo) to build their own complete music infrastructures--content to player--that work just fine without a PC connection.

The Zing prototype shown at D4 had both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios built in. The radios are used to download music and to upload data about what you are listening to. If you have one of these players, you can do cool things, like see what your friends are listening to, then play samples of those tracks, or buy songs and albums directly from the player. If you try buy items when you're not in range of a Wi-Fi access point, the product will queue up your requests and batch-process them when you do eventually connect.

Most people will probably start using a Zing-powered player by first loading it with music that they have on their computer. But say you have just one track by Johnny Cash, and when you're playing it you realize you want more. On your player, you can flag the album it came from, and next time you're in Wi-Fi range, the player will download it for you. The player will stream Sirius radio content (via Wi-Fi, not a satellite connection) and will enable you to do the same thing when you're listening to radio tracks.

The Zing reference player has both a built-in speaker and a microphone, which, combined with the Wi-Fi radio, means it has all the hardware a voice-communication platform needs. So as a bonus, the software enables you to talk with your friends, walkie-talkie style, over the Wi-Fi network.

Building networking capabilities into music players is the obvious next step in their evolution. But wireless devices (cell phones) are also getting music players built into them. It's a bit early to say definitively which model will win out, but it's worth noting that for most people, a cell phone is a necessity while a music player is a luxury; I think that indicates which way the market is going to tilt.

The first Zing-powered players should ship this year, carrying the Sirius brand.

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Sony has released a raft of new audio products to work in conjunction with its newly-announced high-end NW-S700 noise-cancelling music players.

First up are three new cradle audio docking system that allows the latest Walkman music players to slot into the dock to charge while playing back music.

The devices produce 2.1 channel sound from Sony's proprietary S-Master digital amplifier, two magnetic speakers, and a compact subwoofer that together produce 25W RMS. They also feature bass and treble tone control, a remote control, and inputs for other audio devices.

The Sony CPF-NW001 will be sold starting this month, and will be bundled with up to 50 free downloads from the company's online music store. A step up from this model is the CPF-IX001 that features a detachable wifi module so that the hifi can be connected to a home network.

Finally, the CPF-MP001 is designed for Walkman mobile phone owners, as it docks with any mobile with a “Fastport” connection that operates like a USB.

Sony has also unveiled a new micro system, the CMT-U1BT, as well as a set of Bluetooth headphones. The CMT-U1BT streams music wirelessly through its A2DP Bluetooth connection. To encourage people to buy the system, Sony is offering a free two-way A2DP Bluetooth Dongle so that any PC, mobile, portable CD or surround sound system can be Bluetooth compatible. It also comes with a voucher for ten music downloads.

CMTU1BT also features a USB port, puts out 2 x 25W RMS, is equipped with a vertical slot-loading CD mechanism, and has an AM/FM radio tuner.

The new family of stereo headphones let you stream music easily from mobile phones or PCs. The DR-BT20NX and DR-BT30Q also let you pick up incoming calls, change tracks, and adjust volume using remote operation buttons. The DR-BT30Q also offers a microphone, Bluetooth, and rechargeable power supply for the over-ear units; the DR-BT10CX is the in-ear model; and the DR-BT20NX features a neckstrap for comfort.

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[Nokia and Finnish telecom operator, Elisa, announce the world's first commercial WCDMA/HSDPA data call using the 900 MHz band.]

Espoo, Finland -- Nokia and Finnish telecom operator Elisa today carried out the world's first WCDMA/HSDPA data call on the 900 MHz band in a commercial network. The call was conducted in Elisa's live network in Finland, and the equipment included the Nokia Flexi WCDMA Base Station with a special solution for sharing the site infrastructure of the existing GSM base station.

The call demonstrated a new possibility of enhancing the existing WCDMA 3G network. The 900 MHz band can provide 2-4 times larger coverage area than the most commonly used 2 GHz band, thus reducing network deployment costs significantly especially in the rural areas. It also improves the availability of 3G services indoors due to better radio signal propagation characteristics. Finland is among the first countries that have allowed WCDMA 3G operation at 900 MHz band.

Nokia Flexi WCDMA Base Station and Nokia Flexi Multiradio Combiner enable Elisa to share their existing GSM900 base station site, including base station cabinets, antenna lines and power feeders, with the WCDMA 3G network. Utilizing Nokia's solution, the network operator can provide broadband wireless type of services, such as High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), for end-users in a very cost-efficient way.

"Today's WCDMA900 call proves our dedication to continuously develop the Elisa service offering and bring the best services to our customers," says Matti Vikkula, Executive Vice President, Consumer and Small Enterprise Customers, Elisa Corporation. "Building rural 3G coverage in a cost-efficient way is very important for us, and offering our customers HSPA services at 900 MHz band is an interesting possibility to complement our existing HSPA services at 2100 MHz."

"Nokia has a robust position in providing new WCDMA frequency variants to operators. Nokia Flexi Multiradio Combiner is a unique solution for GSM-WCDMA antenna line sharing within the same frequency band," says Ari Lehtoranta, Senior Vice President, Radio Networks, Nokia. "This WCDMA900 call is another testimony of Nokia's strong commitment to support operators in developing their offering to better meet the demand that they face in today's increasingly competitive environment."

Nokia supported Elisa in launching the first HSDPA network in the Nordic Countries in April 2006.

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MP4 stands for MPEG-4. It was developed by the Moving Picture Experts group (MPEG). MP4 is a versatile new internet standard for music and video (multimedia) files. By comparison, MPEG 1 was the format used on CDs and MP3's and MPEG 2 was for DVDs. MP4 is a multimedia standard for computers and wireless devices. MP4 is becoming more and more popular. It allows easy and fluent authoring and playback of multimedia over a wide variety of platforms from computers, game consoles and multimedia players to all sort of wireless devices. It is a true internet standard.

By far, MP3 (MPEG-1 layer 111), which is a type of audio file, is a lot more well known among the general population. This is because it is used and has been used extensively for the creation, storing and transferring of music files on computers and in MP3 players. MP4 in time will likely become more and more well known as it is used in the growingly popular MP4 multimedia players and in assorted internet related wireless products.

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Don’t look for iPod sales to slow down yet despite the constant talk that cell phones will replace MP3 players. The growing worldwide market for flash-based and hard disk drive (HDD)-based players will jump from 140 million units in 2005 to 286 million by 2010, reports the In-Stat research group. Drivers for this market include falling price points, the availability of legitimate subscription and pay-per-download online music sites, increasing Flash memory capacities and enhanced functionality, the high-tech market research firm says.

“Apple continues to dominate