Samsung Electronics is aiming to sell 100,000 of its new top-end multimedia players in China this year, as it embarked on an aggressive campaign to boost its market share.

Samsung's portable music offering, called the yepp T8, would be priced higher than comparable models of Apple Computer's popular iPod, but was smaller and had more functions such as video viewing and game playing, said Jang Jae-hyun, head of Samsung's personal digital audio products division in China.

The top-of-the-line model, which can hold 2 gigabytes of data, carries a suggested retail price of 3,000 yuan (US$370), about the same price for an iPod that has 10 times as much memory.

But in addition to its greater functionality, Samsung is hoping the yepp T8's relatively streamlined size, it is about as big as mobile phone, will help it take on the iPod and other competitors. "We strongly believe our product is better than the iPod," Jang said.

Jang said he expected yepp T8 sales to account for about a 10th of Samsung's total unit sales of digital portable players in China this year, and that should grow as the product replaces others.

As the product took off, he said, Samsung was aiming to boost its share of the China portable digital device market to 20 percent next year from about 16 percent at present.

(Shenzhen Daily July 28, 2005)