April 19, 2005 - LEADING European carrier Ryanair has ended its trial of the APS/Wencor digEplayer handheld IFE system and has decided not to implement it operationally.

After last year’s high-profile launch accompanied by confident predictions of multi-million-dollar revenues to come, Ryanair has back-pedalled steadily away from digEplayer, citing low passenger demand. But the carrier says it still believes there is a market for onboard CD and MP3 players at some point in the future.

The Ryanair decison comes as little surprise to many industry observers, who can point to an early lack of multi-language content and unrealistically short flight times as reasons for the low take-up.

The latter factor has emerged recently as a problem for at least one more handheld IFE supplier, which has seen its advice on minimum practical flight times ignored by another low-cost triallist.

http://www.shephard.co.uk/inflight/Default.aspx?Action=-1000945703&ID=b9f59cb8-8afb-4fd5-88e6-0fa0ce3743df