[c312]

I would say a lot of it has to do with marketing. I'd be willing to bet that most people don't even know there are alternatives to an iPod. They see them, they hear about them and that's how they know them. Creative and even Microsoft haven't made good enough advertising efforts to make their products household names. Like I said, I'll bet you could ask most people if they knew what a Zen or Zune was and they probably wouldn't know.