MPMan

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.

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 then transferred via the parallel port to the docking station that connected to the portable player device.

[1] In North America, the South Korean device was first imported for sale by Michael Robertson's Z Company[2] in mid-1998.

The US price in 1998 for the F10 model with 32 MB flash memory was circa 200 - 250 USD.

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".