Everyone loves a good David-meets-Goliath story. Sim Wong Hoo Sim Wong Hoo , Chief Executive of Singpore-based Creative Technology , sees his outfit as the David versus the Goliath of Apple Computer in the battle for MP3 music player market share.  In the latest entertaining twist in this always colorful business, Hoo took the unusual step of publicly declaring war on Apple . His goal: seizing 40% of the global market for MP3 players.  Calling it an uphill fight is something of an understatement. In the three years since the iPod’s launch, it has become the world’s player of choice. But before the iPod made MP3 players fashionable, Creative was one of the upstart companies that made them popular among the early adopter set.  On the October day in 2001 that Apple introduced its first 5-gigabyte iPod, Creative already had a 20-gigabyte model of its Nomad Jukebox on the market, while others like Rio , (then a unit of the now-defunct SonicBlue, but now part of privately-held D&M Holdings ) had popularized players using flash memory instead of hard drives. The iPod, the size of a deck of cards, was revolutionary.  Creative plans on spending $100 million globally to market its players as an alternative to the iPod, and at least one of its high-end models, the Zen Touch, is very iPod-like in appearance but has some advantages that the iPod doesn’t, one of which is a 24-hour battery life, twice that of the best iPod. Other players in this market come from Sony Rio, Archos , and Thomson/RCA among others.  Creative also has a wide range of flash-based players, a market it first entered in 2002. Apple has so far eschewed flash-based players. But rumors are swirling that Apple will change its tune, and that CEO Steve Jobs Steve Jobs may open 2005 by unveiling an inexpensive Apple-branded flash player at the MacWorld trade show in January. Other players in the space include Rio, iRiver and Samsung . “I wouldn’t count Creative out of this market at all,” says analyst Susan Kevorkian of market research outfit IDC.  Creative has another interesting ace in its deck: Microsoft . Creative was one of the first hardware manufacturers to release a combination video/music player based on Microsoft’s Portable Media Center concept earlier this year. And while so far reaction hasn’t been great–the chief complaint is that the screen is too small–many consider portable video players like it to be an important product category going forward.  And as popular as Apple’s iPod mini is–that’s the smaller player–it could turn out to be a vulnerability within a year or two, says analyst Stephen Baker of NPD Techworld. “For that player Apple used a one-inch hard drive and that size of drive is going to be very popular for music players over the medium term,” he says. “The mini is a lot more vulnerable than the 4G iPod is. Eventually that space will get very competitive.”  Click here for more Monday Matchups  Comments are turned off for this post.
The Singaporean MP3 maker has declared war on the iPod. It's got a long road ahead of it.