Perspective time! You are, of course, well aware that the iPod reigns supreme when it comes to market share among portable digital music players, and so you might be questioning the necessity of Apple's rumored decision to ship cheaper, lower-capacity flash-based iPods starting next month just to compete in the shallowest end of the pool. But here's the thing about the iPod: it isn't a runaway success everywhere. Sure, here in the U.S. it's got over 90 percent of the hard drive player market and nearly 60 percent of the market overall, so we feel pretty good about Apple's massive lead, but as it turns out, in some other countries the iPod is-- believe it or not-- getting smacked around so hard by the competition that it's bleeding from the ears and seeing double.

No, really, it is! To be honest, when faithful viewer Josh Lockie told us a couple of weeks ago that flash-based players were all the rage in Asia, we had no idea just how badly the iPod was getting stomped on. But according to the Korea Times, Apple currently has a goal of capturing the "third largest market share in the Korean MP3 player market within a year." Are you getting this? Apple's goal is to claw its way up into third place (behind iRiver and Samsung) in a year. Reportedly "97 percent of the Korean market is dominated by the flash-memory-type MP3 players," meaning that the iPod's market share in Korea is, at most, 3 percent-- and probably less, since it shares that little puddle with any other manufacturers splashing around with hard drive-based players. So figure that Apple has, what-- 2 percent market share over there? It's like Bizarro World or something. Or the Macintosh.

Now that we realize what the score is over in Korea (and, presumably, several other Asian countries), any reservations we had about the wisdom and necessity of Apple developing a flashPod have evaporated instantaneously, because the very notion that the iPod could have such an insignificant presence in any developed country fills us with profound sorrow and a deep questioning of the very nature of existence. There's just one little problem: Apple might not actually be working on a flashPod. Almost all the speculation is based on one analyst's contacts at an Asian manufacturing firm, and we've seen that sort of info turn out wrong before. ("Confirmed" reports a few years back that Apple-branded PDAs were rolling off the assembly lines spring immediately to mind.) There's also the fact that Apple Korea's CEO Sohn Hyung-man is saying that, since Apple "does not produce" flash-based players, his strategy for climbing into third place is "through aggressive marketing campaigns."

Of course, if he does know about an imminent flashPod release, we suppose he'd clam way up about it around the press, lest he be struck down by a psychic blast from Steve Jobs originating on the other since of the planet. We know, we shouldn't be rattled by Sohn's lack of cryptic comments about "new products coming down the pike sure to shake up the industry," but just knowing that there's a place on earth where the iPod could actually have a 2 percent market share has us foaming at the mouth in agitation. Memo to Apple: fix it. We don't care whether the solution involves flashPods, "aggressive marketing," or missile attacks on iRiver and Samsung manufacturing facilities; just fix the problem so we can sleep at night again. (Assuming we actually slept at night in the first place.)