iPod was a shitty player few tiers below the competition. Tiny battery life, tons of bugs, IO limitations, iTunes nonsence, original, but unergonomic ui, mechanically unsound engineering.

iRivers, Cowons, and Samsungs were a head above it without any doubt. They were just never marketed in US.

Same with Smartphones. Japanese phones had all features of a smartphone a decade before the rest of the world, but they never bothered to market them outside thinking of outside world being "not advanced enough" to culturally absorb a phone as an integral lifestyle element, and not as a work tool.