How it began
According to one account, the idea arose in March 1997 when a Samsung general manager named Moon, on a flight between the United States and Seoul, noticed a fellow passenger using a MiniDisc player while he was reading files about the MP3 format. Samsung showed little enthusiasm, and Moon left that autumn to head a small technology firm, Saehan Information Systems. The first model, the MPMan F10, was shown at the CeBIT fair in Hannover in March 1998 and released in Korea and Japan in May 1998.
Before it existed
The MP3 format already existed and by 1997 could be played on home computers, but the music stayed on the desktop or laptop. Portable listening relied on tapes, CDs and MiniDiscs, all of which used moving parts. A British inventor, Kane Kramer, had patented a solid-state music player in 1981, but the machine was never produced and the patent lapsed in 1988.
How it works
The F10 stored compressed music files in 32 or 64 megabytes of solid-state memory and played them through headphones. Music was transferred from a computer through a docking station. A 32 megabyte model held about eight songs of three and a half minutes. The player weighed 65 grams, did not skip because it had no moving parts, and could run for about eight hours on a battery.
How it spread
The American distributor Eiger soon asked to sell the player. A simplified model, the F20, with a single AA battery and no docking station, went on sale in Europe and the United States in the summer of 1998, in boxes that called it the world's first MP3 player in your pocket. The Diamond Rio PMP300 followed in September 1998 and within months became the better-known player.
Who pushed back
Sales were slow. Saehan was a small firm without the means for heavy advertising, the memory was too small for a full album, and the player was soon overshadowed. The recording industry, fearing that people could copy music from albums and listen for free, responded to MP3 players with lawsuits. These fell mainly on the California maker of the Rio, since Saehan was harder to pursue, and the publicity made the Rio a household name.
What lasted
The MPMan was the first mass-produced portable solid-state digital audio player. One source suggests fewer than 10,000 of the first model were sold, against about 200,000 Rio players. Saehan understood that the money lay in a music download service to run alongside the player but lacked the means to offer one, an opportunity later taken up by services such as iTunes.
