The MPMan music player, manufactured by the South Korean company SaeHan Information Systems, debuted in Asia in March 1998, and was the first mass-produced portable solid state digital audio player.
The internal flash memory could be expanded, but there were no support for external memory. It was delivered with a docking station. To put music into the device, the music first had to be encoded in the mp3 format by an encoder provided by the user. And transfered via the parallel port to the docking station that connected to the portable player device.[1]
In Japan, Tokyo, Chūō Akihabara the "Akiba ~ us" stores in 2 May 1998, initially started selling two models with 32 MB and 64 MB, the price for 32 MB was 39 800 YEN (ca 400 USD), for 64 MB the price was 59 800 YEN[1].
In North America, the South Korean device was first imported for sale by Michael Robertson's Z Company[2] in mid-1998. Around the same time, Eiger Labs, Inc. imported and rebranded the player in two models, the Eiger MPMan F10, and Eiger MPMan F20.[3]
The Eiger MPMan F10 was a very basic unit and wasn't user expandable, though owners could upgrade the memory from 32 MB to 64 MB by sending the player back to Eiger Labs with a check for 69 + 7.95 USD shipping. Measuring at 90 mm tall by 70 mm wide by 16.5 mm thick and weighing a little over 65 gram, it was very compact. The US price in 1998 för the F10 model with 32 MB flash memory was circa 200 - 250 USD.[4]
The Eiger MPMan F20 was a similar model that used 3.3 V SmartMedia cards for expansion, and ran on a single AA battery, instead of rechargeable NiMH batteries.
The MPMan was not well received by critics and consumers. The Rio PMP300, which was released soon afterward, was received better.
The RIAA's Associate Director of Anti-Copyright infringement initially said the MPMan had "no function other than playing material that was stolen from record companies". He later said it was "a unique device. It's something that we haven't seen on the market before".[2][5]