David Caulton made a claim on his blog that I’m still waiting for some verification of.

Apparently, he’s the only one who thinks this and, despite his promise to “ping” someone at NPD to find out the real deal, we’ve yet to hear back from him… Here’s what he says:

The nut with NPD is that they haven’t been able to get all retailers to share data. In the mp3 space, they’ve been very successful – the key breakthrough came a year or so ago when they convinced Apple to share both apple store and apple.com sales figures. So how good is NPD coverage? Actually, it’s excellent. They cover Apple, Best Buy, Target, etc… covering 80% or more of all mp3 players and accessories sold in the United States.

Really?

So far, after exhaustive research, I cannot confirm this fact. In fact, I can’t find one single other writer on the internet that agrees. Caulton claims that this was done in January of last year. One could safely assume that NPD getting such a big coup would result in at least a press-release.

I contacted NPD and haven’t heard a response, and apparently neither has David, but up until now, I have yet to see one single piece of corroborating information to go along with his assertion.

Does he have a PhD in NPD? He sure thinks so… I’m not looking for details, just something more than annecdotal evidence.

David… If you’re reading this… We’re still waiting for that verification. Start small. Since you know this, you heard it somewhere. Where did you hear it? As for me, I’ll continue to believe every single solitary other writer who says otherwise until I’m proven wrong.