With Microsoft’s Zune looking dead and buried following GameStop’s decision to drop it from their line-up, is there really anything that can challenge Apple’s dominance of the MP3 player market?

There have been many players released over the years, many of them with excellent features and performance, but none of them have looked like being able to eat into Apple’s slice of the market.

As GameStop have decided to stop selling the Zune, it proves that Microsoft’s player has failed where so many others before it have come up short. It shows us that retailers believe the iPod is the only real player worth promoting.

Apple’s share of the MP3 player market is massive, meaning other manufacturers are really just competing with each other for second place, for the scraps that fall from Apple’s over laden table.

Apple were able to get into this position by giving people what they wanted from the beginning; a player that allows users to copy their music from their computer to their MP3 player as easily and quickly as possible. That’s where Apple have always excelled, the usability of their software.

While the current trend continues we can expect Apple’s dominance to remain, unless the competition comes up with something new. They need to think outside the box and stop imitating each other if they’re to break Apple’s stranglehold on the market.