Bragging rights to the world's first MP3 player | Perspectives | CNET News.com: "Here comes the irony: In 1998, Compaq's engineers made the first hard drive-based MP3 player and licensed it to a Korean company, Hango, that didn't do much with it. In 2001, the first iPod came out. In 2002, Hewlett-Packard acquired Compaq. In 2004, HP made a deal with Apple to distribute HP-branded iPods. I know I'm reducing the situation, but it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to assert that the entity now known as HP beat Apple in the race to make a high-capacity portable music player by three years--an eternity in the world of MP3 players--and still somehow lost."