Media players by the numbers.(industry news)

The market for freely downloadable media players has long represented the front lines for companies embroiled in the codec wars. Since the results of most side-by-side comparisons are subjective and qualitative at best, Microsoft, Apple, Real, Macromedia, and DivX have crowed about how many times their respective media players have been downloaded to convince content providers that using their codecs will offer the greatest reach. On the surface, this logic makes sense, but the truth is much more complicated than it seems at first glance.

To begin with, the metrics cite