Mobile phones have murdered the DAP market.
Fact is,for most consumers it makes a lot of sense. Streaming media services and cheap, fast mobile data on increasingly powerful hardware has made it very difficult to justify carrying around a dedicated media device as well as their mobile phone.
At this stage the DAP market exists almost exclusively for the very high and very low end markets. With the choices in dedicated audio players essentially being between ridiculous "audiophile" hardware, and the basically disposable pieces of Happy Meal toy plastic crap like the Clip Jam and friends (which, as a side note, doesn't and won't support Rockbox).
It is worth noting that there's still a reasonable market in new, refurbished, and used, DAPs from our supported device list (though some of them you'll quite literally never find or need to pry out of the cold, dead hands of a dedicated collector) available at $insert_local_online_marketplace_here (eBay, Amazon, Trade Me, et al).
Most of the iPods are still available, at a cost, fairly readily. Clip/Clip+/Clip Zip are fairly easy to find still, Fuse/Fuse+ pop up from time to time still.
They're out there, if you look hard enough, and aren't committed to only buying new in box from the OEM.
[Saint]