Sony to Compete with iPod

[MacRumors]

On Tuesday, Sony announced (http://news.com.com/2100-1041-5102340.html) that in 2004 they would introduce versions of a music player for as low as $60 aimed at unseating the popular Apple iPod. With no details, it's unclear how competitive this low end player would be.

Of further interest, Sony detailed plans for upcoming Playstation Portable (PSP) devices which Sony claims "will be the Walkman of the future."

The upcoming portable gaming platform due by the end of 2004 will be multifunctional devices featuring games, music, videos, and communication abilities.

One recent Wired opinion column (http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,60767,00.html) called for Sony to leapfrog the portable music player and embrace portable video players after having let Apple dominate the portable digital music player market. This initiative may partially fulfill that author's wishes.

Sony is felt to have been slow to embrace the digital audio market due to internal conflicts with their Music Division and concerns of losing revenue to digital piracy.

[Phil Of Mac]

Dell DJ, Samsung Y43u2819412...that's nothing. Now, the fight is on.

[JohnGillilan]

Up until the iPod, Sony dominated the portable music market. Frankly, I'm surprsied it has taken them so long to compete with Apple on this front. I'm confident that Sony will provide a great product, however, I am also confident in Apple's ability to remain competitive in a market that they virtually created. Bring it on Sony.

[tentimestwenty]

If Apple would just make a 2GB $100 iPod they'd kill every possible competitor including portable CD players.

[JohnGillilan]

Any thoughts as to how Sony could produce a rival product at such low cost?? How much storage do you suspect their device would have? Internal or removable storage?? Any word on a Sony sponsored download service? They co-founded PressPlay, which they sold to Roxio (now napster2). If they were to repartner with Napster, they would be competing with the Samsing player, which would be a serious conflict of interest. Any thoughts??

[wsteineker]

I've noticed one dominant theme regarding this topic. Everytime an article is written regarding a new MP3 player, regardless of manufacturer or media outlet, it's always describd as some sort of "iPod killer". That is to say that the only model that any of them are compared to is the iPod itself. Where are the comparisons to the Dell DJ? Where are the comparisons to the Samsung Napster Player? These two models in particular were supposed to be iPod killers, and yet are rarely ever mentioned when HD based MP3 players are discussed. If the competition's so great, where is the mindshare (not to mention the marketshare)?

[reyesmac]

Apple knew it would have competition when they launched the iPod. They should know that about any product they launch. So they better have something up their sleeve about price or features to maintain their sales.

Now, if the Playsation Portable can play mp3's and videos and games. I would rather buy that than an iPod if the two are the same price.

I hope Apple does not play catch-up with their iPod someday.

[ITR 81]

Correct they would.

TechTv did a roundup of all the new MP3 players out there and still declared the iPod the champ.

I hoping gives out some good news in the direction the iPod is heading.

Thing is we all know Jobs has talked about the $100-$200 dollar iPod before...now it seems like the time to make it reality.

[neutrino23]

Interesting. In their minds what constitutes a competitive product? Will it sync with iTunes? Will it play nice with Apple's DRM? Will it sync with iCal and Address Book?

There are already a number of cheaper players on the market. It will take more than a low price to unseat the iPod.

Moreover, Apple will not be sitting still. By next summer we may see at least one and perhaps two revisions to the iPod.

That's what makes it so hard to play catchup.

Sony will sell a player as low as $60? I think that is about what I paid for my son's iPod (we took advantage of the special offer to buy it together with a PB).

If price is important Apple is in a good position to adjust price to special markets.

They already have the education discount for students. That could be increased in short spurts. They could offer coupons worth 100 songs. They could offer more bundles like the one recently ended. Buy a Mac and get an iPod for $50 if you are a student.

[sethypoo]

The Sony PSP seems to confusing, not to mention the fact it is so cheap could mean it's flimsy, aka low quality. It is weird how every new MP3 player that comes out is labeled as an 'iPod killer.'

Most amusing.

[Potus]

Will the Sony also have a corkscrew?

[csubear]

About a year i bought a NetMD. For anyone who dose not know what the NetMD was, it was a portable player that i think could of been competion for the ipod. I was based off sony's MiniDisc format, and offered 2 1/2 hours off music on one disc. With a battery life of well over 20 hours of play this device seemed like a winner. I figured for the price of $1 a disc, and $150 for the player i was saveing my self money vs. buying an ipod. ( I wasn't a mac user a the time)

What i ended up doing is wasting about 155 dollars.

The software that the thing came with is pure junk, and it is not avaiable for mac. In fact because of the way the made the device there is now way that even a third party could write a driver the device.(It transfered the music encryped). And again i must say again the software was junk. The software required that you import and re-encode all you music to a sony "format" and placed in to a libary. After that when you wanted to "check out " (you could only check out a song three time, and if you failed to check that song back in it was lost forever) a song it then coverted the file to ATRAC3 and then encryped it for transmision. While this was happening the software always crashed, or hung(thanks windows).

Sony is paranoid about music priating( They are a major record label), and any music device that involes sony will suck for the following reasons.

1. Your music will have to be re-encoded in to their format(Just imagaine how much sound quality will be lost). They are not just going to give up all their ATRAC research.

2. You will have to use there very crappy software(OpenMG). Which is not very open.

3. There will be no mac support.

But anyway. I am sure that i have not covered every thing in my little rant, but this is the best i can do. I am sure sony will screw up the DRM for this thing, and even though it will be a cheaper, sony will kill it with its bad software and DRM.

I am sure other people can say other things about sony's digtal music product(NetMD).

(forgive the spelling and grammer)

[ITR 81]

Well it may not be HD based. It could be something like Compact Flash based but the problem with that 1GB would be like around 100 bucks a pop for them plus the hardware to go around it. Using compact flash though would allow it to be smaller however..not sure on cost however unless 1-2 GB HD's went down alot over past yr.

[tentimestwenty]

The iPod will soon be a loss leader. It's already taken on all the functionality the average person could ever need and eventually there will be so many competitors offering the same thing no one's going to make any money. The only route (as in all other highly competitive markets) is to sell so low and get such market share that you become the only player. Then, hopefully the music downloading can subsidize the hardware and vice-versa. How many companies make money selling portable CD players, or DVD players anymore. They're just commodities and there's little differentiation in the marketplace. A $500 portable do-everything device is many years away from being practical. Battery life and general uselessness are two huge hurdles to anybody buying something like this.

[Phil Of Mac]

Originally posted by tentimestwenty
If Apple would just make a 2GB $100 iPod they'd kill every possible competitor including portable CD players.

That's not really feasible. A 2 GB drive doesn't cost much less than a 10 GB, and a 10 GB can't go into a $100. It's a cost of production issue.

[Phil Of Mac]

Originally posted by tentimestwenty
The iPod will soon be a loss leader. It's already taken on all the functionality the average person could ever need and eventually there will be so many competitors offering the same thing no one's going to make any money. The only route (as in all other highly competitive markets) is to sell so low and get such market share that you become the only player. Then, hopefully the music downloading can subsidize the hardware and vice-versa.

What!?

The music downloading is there to support and promote iPod. iPod is a serious profit product for Apple, and there would be no use to making it a loss leader.

[greenstork]

Originally posted by wsteineker
I've noticed one dominant theme regarding this topic. Everytime an article is written regarding a new MP3 player, regardless of manufacturer or media outlet, it's always describd as some sort of "iPod killer". That is to say that the only model that any of them are compared to is the iPod itself. Where are the comparisons to the Dell DJ? Where are the comparisons to the Samsung Napster Player? These two models in particular were supposed to be iPod killers, and yet are rarely ever mentioned when HD based MP3 players are discussed. If the competition's so great, where is the mindshare (not to mention the marketshare)?

Well, the thread isn't about Samsung and Dell DJ, it's about Sony, arguably the most successful consumer electronics company ever. While they might no produce the highest quality products, they have historically been good enough to capture the "mind share" that you mentioned.

The winner of this battle will be the company with the best vertical integration, assuming Apple and Sony can compete on price. With the opening volley at $60, I am anxious to see what they are offering. With a mini hard drive, I can't see a Sony device being nearly as useful but I am just assuming this to be the case.

[tentimestwenty]

That may or may not be the case but the reality remains, a $100 iPod with any functionality, even solid state memory would clean up the market. I'd buy one even if it had only 1GB of memory. I just want a measly 4 or 5 albums to take with me and I think most everyone else that hasn't bought an iPod is a similar market.

[ITR 81]

Whats cool if it was solid state..maybe someone would come out with ram doubler to increase the size to 2GB.
:)

[chicagdan]

I don't see why anyone would be upset with this -- competition is good. It will make the iPod better and cheaper, it might even give us some Mac compatible choices. In the end, isn't that all we should care about? We're Apple consumers, not employees or stockholders (although I'm sure there are some of those around here too.)

Let Apple worry about their own profitability, they have a duty to impress us, not the other way around.

[leet1]

Originally posted by tentimestwenty
That may or may not be the case but the reality remains, a $100 iPod with any functionality, even solid state memory would clean up the market. I'd buy one even if it had only 1GB of memory. I just want a measly 4 or 5 albums to take with me and I think most everyone else that hasn't bought an iPod is a similar market.

This would fall into my area. I'd be willing to shell out $100 for 1 gig of space, but thats all I'd spend on a portable music device. Would beat the hell out of the Gym's music! lol

The average person wouldn't need more than 1 gig anyways, thats a lot of space and a lot more than I would need to listen to in one day.

I'd prefer flash memory or something similar over a harddrive<they tend to skip I've read on long runs>, but I wouldn't be too picky for that price. Sony makes high quality products, so thats no worry here :D

[wsteineker]

Originally posted by greenstork
Well, the thread isn't about Samsung and Dell DJ, it's about Sony, arguably the most successful consumer electronics company ever. While they might no produce the highest quality products, they have historically been good enough to capture the "mind share" that you mentioned.

The winner of this battle will be the company with the best vertical integration, assuming Apple and Sony can compete on price. With the opening volley at $60, I am anxious to see what they are offering. With a mini hard drive, I can't see a Sony device being nearly as useful but I am just assuming this to be the case.

The issue at hand has much more to do with the other major players in the market (read: not Apple) than you imagine. First, Apple has already captured the aforementioned mindshare to the point that the term "iPod" has become a catch all to refer to an entire range of products. It's now used in much the same way as brand names like Kleenex and Coke. That sort of branding is so rare and powerful that it takes more than just another successful name brand to penetrate the recognition.

Sony also has to get past the competition of its music and hardware arms if it ever wishes to create a usable product in this sector. Read the above post on the NetMD to see what I'm talking about.

Finally, though Sony may be known for quality, they're definitely not known for low price. I would be shocked to see them release a device similarly configured to the iPod (which will be necessary to sell the thing) at a price point that is even competitive. Like I said, they make great stuff. They just charge an arm and a leg for it. :)

[Dahl]

I fear Sony more than any other company then it comes to MP3 players and similar gadgets, they have been around forever and make solid products. But Apple has a huge lead, so if they screw up it's going to be their own fault. I see no reason why Sony should leapfrog over Apple, I'm sure Apple is working hard to make sure they stay ahead.
Isn't it the first time Apple has a product that's the bestselling in it's group ?

[neutrino23]

Reread the article. It doesn't say MP3 player, it says music player. Sony's current player uses Sony's propritary ATRAC format, not MP3.

If the player will not support MP3 and will not support AAC it is sheer hubris on the part of Sony execs to think they can get any substantial market share.

In the US iPod gets a lot of help by being tied to iTMS. Note that in Japan (no iTMS) iPod is still a market leader.

The second thing I notice is that Sony seems to be offering a melange of future products. They don't seem to have any strategy other than spaghetti marketing. Toss out a bunch of different products and see if one sticks.

[greenstork]

Originally posted by tentimestwenty
That may or may not be the case but the reality remains, a $100 iPod with any functionality, even solid state memory would clean up the market. I'd buy one even if it had only 1GB of memory. I just want a measly 4 or 5 albums to take with me and I think most everyone else that hasn't bought an iPod is a similar market.

It's amazing how often this argument comes up for me on these threads but for me, if it is a choice between Apple gaining market share and Apple remaining financially successful, I chose the latter.

Historically, it has kept Apple one of the most innovative companies of the past two decades. If you think about it, they've always been this way. As long as you can vertically integrate, and maintain high profit margins on your products, you can afford to sink a bunch of money into new ideas.

So for those who want to get a cheap, flimsy mp3 player, buy a Sony or a Dell DJ. For those who want a quality product, pay more for an iPod, innovation isn't cheap and nobody likes a copycat. Ask yourself why you use Apple in the first place.

[sethypoo]

Originally posted by Potus
Will the Sony also have a corkscrew?

I think a wine bottle opener would be handy.....:D

[Scottgfx]

We have all heard the news about Sony lately. They are not in as strong a position as they once were. Imagine a future where Apple could become a much larger consumer electronics company. Would you buy an Apple television set? Or an Apple toaster oven? Mmmmm, perhaps not. :)

[leet1]

Originally posted by greenstork
So for those who want to get a cheap, flimsy mp3 player, buy a Sony or a Dell DJ. For those who want a quality product, pay more for an iPod, innovation isn't cheap and nobody likes a copycat. Ask yourself why you use Apple in the first place.

Ok, the Sony product thats being talked about hasn't even come out, but your already saying that it will be cheap and flimsy? Come on :rolleyes:

[ITR 81]

I could see Apple doing Widescreen LCD or Plasma screens for TV and Mac viewings.
I could also see Apple brand furniture and Apple branded Robot like Aismo from Honda.

[max11]

Originally posted by greenstork It's amazing how often this argument comes up for me on these threads but for me, if it is a choice between Apple gaining market share and Apple remaining financially successful, I chose the latter.

Historically, it has kept Apple one of the most innovative companies of the past two decades. If you think about it, they've always been this way. As long as you can vertically integrate, and maintain high profit margins on your products, you can afford to sink a bunch of money into new ideas.Here here... i like apple because even though they're expensive, i know i've got the best and they just keep on innovating and sinking money (including my money;)) into new stuff that i can enjoy. so what if i have to pay extra for it? imagine if there was no apple as a market-leader. that would mean less innovation in the market as a whole. the ipod is the best thing that's happened to apple since the original imac, and i for one want to see them milking for all it's worth...

lets watch sony try to innovate, and hopefully the ipod can take some cues from them and possible even filter some of that functionality into the ipod gen4 - obviously whilst keeping it small, light and handy. even if it is still expensive.

[Squire]

Originally posted by ITR 81
Well it may not be HD based. It could be something like Compact Flash based but the problem with that 1GB would be like around 100 bucks a pop for them plus the hardware to go around it. Using compact flash though would allow it to be smaller however..not sure on cost however unless 1-2 GB HD's went down alot over past yr.

Remember: Sony has the Memory Stick. How big are they capacity-wise? Perhaps Sony has a new, high-storage Memory Stick ready to be unveiled.

Squire

[Sabenth]

Sony makes high quality products, so thats no worry here well tickle me pink bollocks to that ive owned lets see now 4 PS2S 3 PSONES 3 ORGINAL PLAYSTATONS
UPTTEN WALKMANS LOST COUNT
VIDEO PLAYER WENT DOWN THE PAN AFTER A COUPLE OF MONTHS.


cheap crap....

And thats not the worst of it i recomend PS2'S TO FRINEDS WHO ALL HAVE HAD PROBLEMS . Agghh the fufing nightmares...

Dont like the idea of this cheap version music player granted Mini disk is great but its hardly used down here in Australia well i cant seem to find any players for my home entertaiment system.. and wha what you know thats a sony too and that only works because ive tinkered with it and made a few mods here and there just so it can use the volume nob....

Nope dont like this one bit and wats this audio format they use

Eh!!!

[wowoah]

Does anyone else think it's odd that they're even comparing the two products? I guess the Sony exec's comment begs this comparison, but it feels like to me that Sony's device will cover a completely different market than the iPod.

The PSP is designed to be the cheap, mobile, all-in-one entertainment device. It has a powerful graphics processor, a widescreen display, and is designed to play games. The specs listed on the linked site state that the included hard drive will be 1.8GB, which is less than half of my music collection, and I consider mine to be pretty modest. We also have to consider the fact that with all this functionality, Sony's PSP is going to be a bit chunky. Probably not the size the Game Gear was, but nowhere as small as the GameBoy, not to mention the iPod.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I personally feel like this comparison is stretched. It's like saying the PS2 is a Mac killer--they can't possibly "kill" each other as they don't cover the same markets. If I want a small device that'll play all my music and fit into my pocket, I'm getting an iPod. If I want a cool handheld game system that will let me bump some tunes on the side, the PSP's for me. It may ultimately cost Apple some market share, but it's far from an iPod killer.

Just my $0.02.

[arn]

Update: Apple-X.net (http://www.apple-x.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=585&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0) consolidates reported specs and a concept photo for the PSP device. The device will feature 16:9 ratio screen, MPEG4 decoder, AAC, ATRAC3 and MP3 support. The products based on this platform are said to feature a wide range of configurations as well as price points

[MacSlut]

Sony may release a player for $60, but it won't be a rival of the iPod. Hell, you could sell a player for a lot less than that if it was just a flash memory player with little or no memory included.

$60 is waaaay below the cost to produce an iPod, and if Sony has some new tech...say a new Memory Stick, that would be much bigger news than this product... because to be truly considered a rival, we'd be looking at something like a 50 times size increase at less than a tenth of the current price for the Memory Sticks.

"Sony is felt to have been slow to embrace the digital audio market"

Uh...right, DAT, CD, MD, SACD, Memory Stick based players, and all the other things I guess don't count.

Wasn't ATRAC the first major audio codec for consumers? Didn't it kinda pave the way for MP3 players?

Just because Sony has done a lousy job (in general) for the past couple of decades doesn't mean they're slow to embrace.

[poultryfarm]

Originally posted by chicagdan
I don't see why anyone would be upset with this -- competition is good. It will make the iPod better and cheaper, it might even give us some Mac compatible choices. In the end, isn't that all we should care about? We're Apple consumers, not employees or stockholders (although I'm sure there are some of those around here too.)

Let Apple worry about their own profitability, they have a duty to impress us, not the other way around. well said... i think this often gets forgotten here
i look forward to being impressed

[jail]

AAC is a big plus, a very big plus. It will help the music store, and it will be a massive help to apple in the aac vs wma "war".

I think Sony has a good chance of getting this right, and that means there will be two good systems out there, both of them will support AAC, and ITMS.

With cd's being used less and less, by early 2004 there will be more than enough room for two players in this market.

Overall, i think this is good news. The iPod can't be killed by one competitor. Two or three maybe, but not one. And i don't think any of the other players are worth being called competitors (yet).

[djdarlek]

If Apple take on this Sony PSP device with a predicted iPod2 I can forthsee Apple again getting market dominance.

The problem is that Sony is going to have to convince its possible customers that they want their device, and that it will enhance the users' life, films on the go and all that.... BUT Sony are still going to charge for the discs... expect huge $$$ just to be able to watch the Matrix on a tiny screen on a bus.

Apple will probably create a similar device to help people play the thousands of DivX movies that a lot of broadband users seem to be collecting. The copyright industry will probably flip out at this point, leading to a similar MP3 situation, just with films instead.

To counter-act this, Apple will then probably launch the iQuicktime Movie Store, sell a few movies and take the copyright heavies out of the equation.

Just my humble opinion

dave

[AndrewMT]

Apple is already being outdone in the sub-notebook market, especially by Sony. Has anyone seen the Sony Vaio PCG-TR2A? This is probably the best sub-notebook on the market right now. This notebook is thinner than the ipod, has a much better screen, standard integrated bluetooth and wireless internet. The centrino is proven to perform much better than comparably equipped powerbook G4s (not to mention the fact that the Centrino does not burn your lap or hands). Just about the only hardware advantage the 12" powerbook has over this smaller notebook is that you can add a superdrive and the graphics card is a better.

[whooleytoo]

Originally posted by tentimestwenty
The iPod will soon be a loss leader.

That's the funny thing, this makes sense, but Apple's going in the other direction!

Apple's making little profit on the songs so it can sell more iPods, much like it's Mac policy: make high profits on the hardware and giving most of the software for free. They're slowly starting to realise this isn't the best model (hardware margins are always fickle) and are trying to make more money from the software/upgrades/services (repeating charges!). It's the same principle most other industries have adopted, games consoles, mobile phones etc. It's the repeating charges where you make your money.

I think ultimately, they will settle on this model, get the player for cheap, but pay more for the music - probably with some added value, like the music video being included (once bandwidth permits?)

Mike.

[Blaaze]

Sony's product looks pretty solid. Reminds me of the outer casing of an iBook, but black.

They say they're trying to offer it at $60 dollars, and the article says how there are going to be many price points. I'm guessing that $60 dollars is the bare minimum. I don't even know how they can make them that cheap. Surely Sony's going to be selling these at a loss because nobody can make anything that functional with all the goods and sell it at $60. But of course maybe the price of technology has dropped THAT much.

I don't see this toppling the iPod. I see it creating a market like the iPod did. Honestly, I don't need to watch videos on the go. I don't need to play video games while I'm away. I don't need a product that does all that. I'm guessing many are not going to need or want that. But I may be proven wrong. who knows. The thing with the iPod is that it's a music player first, and that's all it is. It has nice features with games, calendar, etc. But it focuses on the one aspect, which is music. With a product that integrates many different technologies together is a very difficult thing to do. Many video cameras come with the ability to take pictures. But most of these pictures are pretty low quality and crappy. You can find some that are pretty decent, but you pay a premium. For the most part, consumers like having their gadgets devoted to the what they're good at. I don't believe convergence will ever happen. These integration schemes all end up with ****ty products that are good at one thing and bad at the other or they just suck at both.

Maybe Sony's onto something here, maybe they're not. Sony revolutionized portable music with the walkman. Maybe they can do it again with their PSP, but I have my doubts.

[mhar4]

Checking out the specifications on the www.apple-x.net link, the Sony device will use their UMD (Universal Media Disk) format. This says a lot about the corporate mindet at Sony. They are still operating as a 1970s-80s consumer electronics company, where the goal was to establish a format which could then be licensed. e.g. Philips and audio cassettes; Sony (and Philips) and CDs, Matsu****a and VHS etc etc. The licensing is what brings in the revenue streams and that's why there are always "format wars". Or at least it used to be that way. Apple clearly understand that supporting more open formats like mp3 and even AAC is the way to go. Sony is still trying to establish its proprietary formats as market leaders: UMD, ATRAC, etc. Sony aren't going to be successful this way.

[sosumi]

Originally posted by jail
AAC is a big plus, a very big plus. It will help the music store, and it will be a massive help to apple in the aac vs wma "war".


I'm not sure it will help the music store just because it supports AAC. What about FairPlay?

[hokka]

http://www.zvue.com/

Check this out (not sure if anyone elses' posted earlier, got to go to bed, not time to read all, sorry in advance).

$99!!! Good night!

[sillycybin]

if the quality is anything like a PSII, it will suck big time. Everyone that i know that has bought a PSII is either on their second console or sporting an Xbox. Sony has ruined their reputation, im my opinion, becauseof the crappy qualityof the PSII.
I still dont understand the need to watch video on a tiny lil screen. I can't imagine watching a movie on one of those things. Im already getting a headache thinking about it.
Please leave the iPod as a music player.....the way it should be.

[the_mole1314]

Does ANYONE trust Sony anymore? I mean, this huge hard drive based MP3 that's less than $60. Then we have this PSP that has 10+ hours of battery life, it can play movies, music, and use a optical media based memory system. I doubt it that it can do half of what it says.

[Jerry Spoon]

Originally posted by Potus
Will the Sony also have a corkscrew?

No, don't be silly....but it will make Julienne Fries

[devotchka]

Originally posted by chicagdan
Let Apple worry about their own profitability, they have a duty to impress us, not the other way around.

Hear! Hear!

[dloomer]

I think we agree that iPod will not become a loss leader ... but the scary thing is that the current PS2 (like all video game machines) is already being sold below cost to get people to buy the games ... wouldn't that be the reason they could sell the PSP so cheaply? So it might actually be a $200 machine ... or better ...

The good news is that while this might sell, it is very possible that people will ignore the music playing feature and just be happy that they have a $60 game machine and video player ... especially if it doesn't support MP3 ...

[Potus]

Originally posted by Jerry Spoon
No, don't be silly....but it will make Julienne Fries

Yeah, but I always like vin ordinaire w/my pommes frites. WAAAAAAAAAAA!

[csubear]

Originally posted by arn
Update: Apple-X.net (http://www.apple-x.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=585&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0) consolidates reported specs and a concept photo for the PSP device. The device will feature 16:9 ratio screen, MPEG4 decoder, AAC, ATRAC3 and MP3 support. The products based on this platform are said to feature a wide range of configurations as well as price points

sony's netMD had mp3,wma, and all that jazz supported. all they did was convert it to atrac3. No physical mp3 was on the player. Check out my pervious post about the netmd.

[Blaaze]

Originally posted by hokka
http://www.zvue.com/

Check this out (not sure if anyone elses' posted earlier, got to go to bed, not time to read all, sorry in advance).

$99!!! Good night!


looks like the mp3 player intel developed before

[dongmin]

Originally posted by sillycybin
if the quality is anything like a PSII, it will suck big time. Everyone that i know that has bought a PSII is either on their second console or sporting an Xbox. Sony has ruined their reputation, im my opinion, becauseof the crappy qualityof the PSII.
I still dont understand the need to watch video on a tiny lil screen. I can't imagine watching a movie on one of those things. Im already getting a headache thinking about it.
Please leave the iPod as a music player.....the way it should be. Crappy quality of not, Sony has done a pretty good job of selling the PS2. If they really integrate this PSP with the console, Sony will sell a ton. I'm pretty amazed by the feature list, but I'm sure it'll cost you. Their mp3 players and clios aren't exactly cheap. My guess on the scale of features:

$60--basic portable game player; no mp3s; no mp4s; no wireless, but you can network via a console

$149--play games + music; no wireless; memory-stick only

$199--adds a HD, but limited capacity

$249--adds mp4 playback, bigger HD

$299--adds wireless funcionality and basic web-browsing

$399--adds extras like AV in/out, surround-sound, big HD, etc.

I'm skeptical that the 480 x 272 24-bit color screen will be standard; I also doubt whether the processor and graphics chip will be standard. BUT maybe Sony will take a loss in the cheaper versions to gain marketshare.

[jonapete2001]

i think out of all the hard drive mp3 players out their sony's upcoming one will be the one that has any shot taking the crown away from the ipod. sony is the best at just about all electronic items. they know what they are doing. IMO they have the best pc laptops, the best stereos, the best tv's, vcrs dvd players. this is a serious threat to apple they better step it up a noch or 2 before sony can do its thing.

Just look at what they did to nintendo when the playstation was released.

[sushi]

Originally posted by AndrewMT
Apple is already being outdone in the sub-notebook market, especially by Sony. Has anyone seen the Sony Vaio PCG-TR2A? This is probably the best sub-notebook on the market right now. This notebook is thinner than the ipod, has a much better screen, standard integrated bluetooth and wireless internet.
Uh, what iPod model are you talking about? The iPod is about half as thick! :eek: :)

And if you are referening to the 12 inch PBG4, it is 1.18 inches thick -- still thinner than the PCG-TR2A at 1.37"-1.44” thick.

Sushi

[nazariteguitar]

[i] The specs listed on the linked site state that the included hard drive will be 1.8GB, which is less than half of my music collection, and I consider mine to be pretty modest. [/B]

Just to correct you, sony has nrver said that there will be a hard drive in the PSP the 1.8 G you are refering to is the UMD's which will be used to hold DVD quality movies, songs, and games with near ps2 quality.

[1macker1]

A $200 5gig iPod is all that is needed.

[Le Big Mac]

Originally posted by tentimestwenty
That may or may not be the case but the reality remains, a $100 iPod with any functionality, even solid state memory would clean up the market. I'd buy one even if it had only 1GB of memory. I just want a measly 4 or 5 albums to take with me and I think most everyone else that hasn't bought an iPod is a similar market.

If you could get the costs right, it would be a great seller. I'd probably buy one as a supplement, for car trips or what not (wife's car). And it would stiffle entry. There's no reason it couldn't be the same thing with much lower capacity. And most people would probably upgrade to larger soon enough.

[Mr.Hey]

I'll own both. My iPod will be used for music contacts and all that and the sony I'll use for games and video. I will not be using this as my audio player, Apple has this task perfected. Competition is always a good thing, otherwise Steve wouldn't move his butt as quickly

[nazariteguitar]

Since many of you have only herd of the PSP recently I'll give you a overview (since I have been folowing it's development for about a year now)


here is a artical from IGN.com that should give you a good idea of what the PSP is about.

"PSP will make use of twin MIPS R4000 32 bit processors running at max 333 Megahertz. One of these units is referred to as the Media Engine, and is to be used for sound, movies and I/O management. In addition, the system will include a so-called VFPU floating point vector unit with calculation capability of up to 2.6 Gigaflops. This latter unit is meant for assisting the CPU in 3D calculations.
Memory for the system is divided into two areas. In all, the system is expected to feature 8 Megabytes main memory with bandwidth of 2.6 Gigabytes per second along with two megabytes of sub-memory, also at 2.6 Gigabytes per second, which will be used by the Media Engine.

Outside of the CPU and main memory, the system will of course include a graphics processing unit (GPU). The GPU is made up of a Rendering Engine and a Surface Engine and has access to 2 Megabytes of VRAM with a bandwidth of 5.3 Gigabytes per second. The hardware will include support for traditional polygons as well as curved surface primitives along with such things as clipping, morphing and more, freeing up software from having to deal with these. Sony claims a theoretical polygon performance of 33 million polygons per second.

The system's UMD (Universal Media Disc) optical disk format has also been clarified a bit. A UMD is a 60 millimeter dual layered disk that can store up to 1.8 Gigabytes of data. Transfer rate for the reader unit is 11 Megabits per second, which is twice the transfer rate of a standard DVD system. Sony is also promising the highest level of copy protection for these discs using DiscID and AES encoding technology.

Multimedia support is big for the system. Sony announced MPEG4 support at E3, and now they've gotten a bit clearer, revealing that the PSP will use the AVC decoder, which has a high encoding rate. This will allow the UMD to store up to two hours of DVD quality video. Sound is also taking a high place on the system's feature list. The PSP will feature reconfigurable DSPs which can be rewritten allowing for support for the latest sound technology. Sony announced today compatibility with the ATRAC3 plus format along with AAC and mp3. In addition, the system will support playback of 3D and 7.1 channel sound.

On top of all this is Wireless LAN. The system will include as standard IEEE802.11 wireless LAN. Sony had originally intended to make this an option, but game creators were pretty adamant about its inclusion. Sony revealed no further details about the system's networking features, unfortunately.

The PSP will, of course, play games as well. Sony will be tapping into its PlayStation heritage and including the familiar triangle, circle, X, square, start, select, L1 and R1 buttons on the system. These will be digital. In addition, the system will include a single analogue thumb pad".


-Compare & Contrast- ipod vs. psp

Personaly I think for most people 10,000 songs is overkill unless you use it for storing large files like movies, but then there's no screen on the ipod.

I mean it doesn't take much to realize that the psp will absolutly destroy the ipod in the multimedia area. radio, t.v. tuner, Playstation1.5 power (as in between PS1 and PS2), 4.5 inch screen, analog joystic, mp3 player, will be compatible with PS2 and at no more than $200-$250 there is no way the ipod could even come close.


Personaly for me the PSP is the way to go, but don't get me wrong the ipod as an absolutly amazing device, but for the mony and the fetures the PSP fit's my lifestyle perfectly.

[1macker1]

At 200 dollars, i could justify buying one maybe two iPods as gifts for close frineds, but at 300, i cant do that. The extra 100 bucks do make a difference to me.

3 iPods@ 200 = 600
3iPods @300 = 900

it's a big difference.

And if they get the price down to 100 bucks, hell i'd get one for just about anyone that i know.:)

[TheFish]

MISTAAAAKE!, but i think they will be more compition to apple then dell or napster or anyone else.

[Trimix]

Originally posted by Potus
Will the Sony also have a corkscrew?

I was wondering the same thing
can it cook coffee ?

Damn, you beat me to it :D

[Lanbrown]

Originally posted by wsteineker
I've noticed one dominant theme regarding this topic. Everytime an article is written regarding a new MP3 player, regardless of manufacturer or media outlet, it's always describd as some sort of "iPod killer". That is to say that the only model that any of them are compared to is the iPod itself.

New products are always compared to a benchmark, which in this case is the iPod.

[Wonder Boy]

its about time the music player monopoly was challenged by an actual player. lets see how this turns out.

[damax452]

The iPod is an mp3/AAC player. It can do other tricks, but thats its main purpose. And it does this very well. This PSP thing is supposed to be an all in one magical player that can do everything you'd ever want from a portable device. So comparing the two directly is not fair, and useless since PSP is far from being released.

My theory on electronic devices, and other equipment is this. If you attempt to design a product that does multiple tasks (i.e. MPEG4, mp3, cell phone, corkscrew, etc.) then you will not be able to make the device perform any one of the tasks with great success. Aspects of each task will have to be compromised in order to create a cost effective device.

There seems to be a lot of this going on today, nailing two products together that have never been nailed together before and calling it innovation. I'm not impressed.

Take for example those all-in-one home gym systems, that "combine 237 health club quality excercises." No, they don't. They are just a weak attempt at copying very expensive equipment and selling it to people who can't tell the difference.

So this PSP may be competitive with the iPod in the future, but I see some problems.

1. Battery life would be low if the screen was color or you played video on it.

2. 1.8GB? please. I dont want to carry around 10 discs everywhere i go. Hard drives are the way to go.

3. If it doesnt play mp3s, and uses some other format, forget it. Adhering to standards is essential in making a successful product.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. We'll see how this turns out.

[silvergunuk]

Will The PSP have an emotion engine too?

[Stella]

Sony make good products and with good style.

Hopefully, competition from Sony will encourage Apple to make a video iPod.

Competition is good - keeps innovation going. Keeps Apple innovating.

[Java]

Originally posted by ITR 81
Correct they would.

TechTv did a roundup of all the new MP3 players out there and still declared the iPod the champ.

I hoping gives out some good news in the direction the iPod is heading.

Thing is we all know Jobs has talked about the $100-$200 dollar iPod before...now it seems like the time to make it reality.

The iPod has already saturated the market. And with Apple holding the keys to the most popular music store online, I'm sure the iPod will reign supreme.

[stoid]

One problem with devices of this nature, even if Sony gets all the funtions to work well.

If you're playing a game or movie and your batteries go dead, you suddenly can't use it for cell phone or something like that. If you buy one product that serves 12 functions for you, then if one function needs to be in for repaired, suddenly you are out the use of eleven other functions, heaven forbid one of them be something like cell phone or other device that could be needed in an emergency.

While this product is a great idea, I don't see it having the huge market desirability like people are hoping.

Once again, the "iPod killer" will be slaughtered by the iPod and again Apple will be able to evade innovation.

Is Apple the only company that can make a decent portable media product these days?!

edit: Dang windows and it's inability to check spelling as I type :eek:

[Porshuh944turbo]

yawn...:rolleyes:

[1macker1]

Who knows what the battery life will be. I say bring it on, due to the fact that it will make Apple drop the price of the iPod. I dont think the sony 'mp3/video/telephone' will do any harm to the ipod market. Didn't they see how sega's NGAGE flopped.

[QuiteSure]

The iPod is an audio device. Most people in purchasing an audio device are going to use it in conjunction with another activity (e.g., exercising, driving, reading, partying, etc.). When you add video and gaming, you're requiring the user to devote primary attention to the device. This product will not compete with the iPod, but rather with Gameboys and portable DVD players.

The critical advantage with the iPod is and will remain its small form factor, easy navigation and superb integration with iTunes. These are the factors which will continue to drive unit sales, along with, of course, constant storage capacity.

[Potus]

Originally posted by QuiteSure
The iPod is an audio device. Most people in purchasing an audio device are going to use it in conjunction with another activity (e.g., exercising, driving, reading, partying, etc.). When you add video and gaming, you're requiring the user to devote primary attention to the device. This product will not compete with the iPod, but rather with Gameboys and portable DVD players.

The critical advantage with the iPod is and will remain its small form factor, easy navigation and superb integration with iTunes. These are the factors which will continue to drive unit sales, along with, of course, constant storage capacity.

Excellent analysis. In fact the entire thread has been a good one...thanks to all.

[johnnyjibbs]

Sony has always made expensive but quality products. Selling something at a cheap price lowers their perceived value, regardless of the product. Even their PS2, more of an exception, is still the most expensive games console on the market, despite being the oldest and least powerful. Therefore, I doubt any $60 "iPod killer" would cause any loss in sleep for Apple.

It depends what market Sony is going for. The games device will be a different market to the iPod because it will be more competing with the Nintendo GBA.

I've never believed in convergence of devices. When I buy a console, I want it to play games, not do everything else. A phone should be small and portable and be used to make calls, not something that is as complicated as Windows to use, crash-prone, and can do a million other things in one - all in one very expensive device that is the size of a bus. I think Steve Jobs has a similar view, which is why we aren't seeing iPod AV and the like - these features drive up the price and make it bigger/more complicated, and lose focus on the actual purpose of the device, when all you probably want is something that primarily plays your music on the go (caldenders, etc on the iPod don't add to the size/weight/cost and are just bonus extras).

I think Sony has to think very carefully about which market it wants to be in, and then sell at a price that people would 'expect' it to be priced at. Sony has never been seen as a 'budget' company and its reputation would be ruined if it was to become one.

Edit: QuiteSure - you're damn right.

[blueflame]

i wonder, with the ipod hdd sizes getting bigger, and an almost definite 80 hdd soon, might there be ipod with pixlet compression. then you could watch your own dvd's on your ipod? doesnt pixlet convert a 4 gig movie into a 256 meg file? this seems completely feasable to me.
that do ya'll think?
Andreas

other than this, i dont see a real use for pixlet for the average consmer

[Kid Red]

Anyone read the specs? It;s a 1.8g HD and a memory stick. Not going to store that many mp3s, and who wants to watch video on a tiny screen?

Sorry, the iPod does one thing and does it better then everyone else. Sony is going to try to kill it by doing 5 things and not come close to doing the mp3 as well as Apple and doing cheap meaning not much profit. Am I missing something? This sounds like a personal issue, they also mention taking it to "steve jobs".

[sushi]

Originally posted by Java
The iPod has already saturated the market.
Yeah, right!?!?!

Currently the iPod may be the industry leader, but the market is far from saturated.

Remember, Apple must stay competitive to keep their lead.

Markets can and do change quickly. For example, just ask the Swiss about the electronic watch and how it changed their market share.

Sushi

[blueflame]

to the average non mac person, i think price does matter alot. apple would do very well for even a 1 gig ipod at less than 100 dollars
like 99.99
popele see prices first, especially parents who buy gifts. they can always think i cant wait till i get the 40 gig ipod, but ill settle for my one gig right now till i have money.
more money for apple!!!
make at least one really cheap one, to get people hooked. its like drugs
the first hit is free
;-)

Andreas

[Kid Red]

Originally posted by hokka
http://www.zvue.com/

Check this out (not sure if anyone elses' posted earlier, got to go to bed, not time to read all, sorry in advance).

$99!!! Good night!

OK, no mention of HD space, but for $99 it can't be much. So how do you get these full length 'movies' onto the device? Why would I want to watch Matrix on a screen the size of matchbook? And with no mention of HD size, you have no idea how many mp3s it will fit.

Sorry, but the aim these companies are taking by saying 'we do 15 things compared to the 1 the iPod does' isn't the right approach. iPod plays mp3s and syncs with iTunes and does that better then anyone. Most of the people who have an iPod use it for, wait, ah, listening to mp3s!!!! So why the frick would i care if the next player has a macthbook size video screen!?!?

Competition is good, but I don't see any of these devices grabbing much from Apple's 'music player' market share.

[QuiteSure]

Originally posted by blueflame

make at least one really cheap one, to get people hooked. its like drugs
the first hit is free
;-)

Andreas

We've all been saying that about a "headless" iMac, but Apple hasn't done it. I think the size of the HD is a huge factor in driving the price of the iPod, and that's a factor over which Apple does not have control.

Steve Jobs has recently said that he'd "Love" to sell a $100 iPod, but they don't want the brand quality to suffer in favor of price.

[stoid]

Originally posted by blueflame
i wonder, with the ipod hdd sizes getting bigger, and an almost definite 80 hdd soon, might there be ipod with pixlet compression. then you could watch your own dvd's on your ipod? doesnt pixlet convert a 4 gig movie into a 256 meg file? this seems completely feasable to me.
that do ya'll think?
Andreas

other than this, i dont see a real use for pixlet for the average consmer

How many times does this need to be address? Pixlet was NOT designed for the "average consumer" Pixlet was designed as a compression factor for high end video editors using HD or HD/2 size video which is like 4 times the resolution of DVD and other digital video images. Pixlet was developed to give these high-end video editors another reason to do their editing with Final Cut Pro on a macintosh. This is why Pixlet will not compress a mpeg 2 video smaller, and instead will increase the size. Pixlet is not, and never will be intended for consumer home use. Period. End of story.

[the_mole1314]

I'd bet my life that Apple comes out with a 5gig $99 iPod before the end of the year.

[johnnyjibbs]

the ePod?

[csubear]

Originally posted by stoid
How many times does this need to be address? Pixlet was NOT designed for the "average consumer" Pixlet was designed as a compression factor for high end video editors using HD or HD/2 size video which is like 4 times the resolution of DVD and other digital video images. Pixlet was developed to give these high-end video editors another reason to do their editing with Final Cut Pro on a macintosh. This is why Pixlet will not compress a mpeg 2 video smaller, and instead will increase the size. Pixlet is not, and never will be intended for consumer home use. Period. End of story.

Everything that he said, and...
do you guys remember when Steve interduced pixlet? He said wow this is so cool, and o ya you need at least a 1Ghz G4 to decode it.

[QuiteSure]

Originally posted by the_mole1314
I'd bet my life that Apple comes out with a 5gig $99 iPod before the end of the year.

Dealtime search on Sub-5gb HDs from Toshiba:

http://www.dealtime.com/xPP-Hard_Drives-toshiba-1___5_gb

Except for one bizarre $47 price, all the other prices are way over $100 just for the drive.

Mole, you'd better try and renegotiate your deal with the devil ;)

[noel4r]

uhoh Apple beware.......... they better respond to this move

[machinehien]

I doubt it will happen this year or next, there's more to the manufacturing cost of the ipod than the toshiba HD itself. Battery, controller, those touch sensitive interface. I'm guessing a 5GB HD costs about the same as a 10 GB if you factor in economy of scale or else we would still have a killer 5 GB on the market.

I don't understand why people keep equating the storage capacity of the platters with hypothetical pricepoints? It's only about 25% percent of the equation. The low end 10 GB is already stripped of all the accessories with the exception of the earbuds to make it economical.

[mac pac]

I liked sony....untill now

[1macker1]

And that's exactly the point, I'd get one for $99 just to see how it works. You cant beat that with a bat. Apple better do more than music, or it's going to be on the short end of the stick.

I'd love to watch the matrix on this device. No it wont be sitting in the livng room playing for my guest, but at school (during breaks), at work(during lunch), and just to show off. It would be great.

Originally posted by Kid Red
OK, no mention of HD space, but for $99 it can't be much. So how do you get these full length 'movies' onto the device? Why would I want to watch Matrix on a screen the size of matchbook? And with no mention of HD size, you have no idea how many mp3s it will fit.

Sorry, but the aim these companies are taking by saying 'we do 15 things compared to the 1 the iPod does' isn't the right approach. iPod plays mp3s and syncs with iTunes and does that better then anyone. Most of the people who have an iPod use it for, wait, ah, listening to mp3s!!!! So why the frick would i care if the next player has a macthbook size video screen!?!?

Competition is good, but I don't see any of these devices grabbing much from Apple's 'music player' market share.

[MorganX]

Originally posted by djdarlek
If Apple take on this Sony PSP device with a predicted iPod2 I can forthsee Apple again getting market dominance.


iPod2? What could be in the iPod2 that would make it more competitive. If it becomes a PDA it will be competing with Palm and Windows Mobile. I don't know you need an iPod2, you just need to reduce manufacturing cost so you can reduce price.

I'm getting a PocketPc Phone for Christmas and I would love, love to be able to play AACs and access iTMS. I don't need an iPod2 or an iPod PDA, just like I don't need a HD MP3 player, my iPod can't be beaten.

What I do need is either the iPod and iTMS to do WMA, or for AAC to proliferate, I would like to see iTMS support in other devices. I really predict flash players to begin to take over. iPod is great but there is still a need for flash based players and PDAs are going to surge over the next couple years IMO. I think the PSP will be a huge hit with it's core market.

edit: with the PSP rumored tos upport AAC, this could be enormously good news for Apple if they can workout a Fairplay-AAC license agreement with Sony. I have to believe that in time, iTMS will fail or become marginal and irrelevant rather quickly if it continues to only have 1 client device.

[whooleytoo]

Originally posted by damax452
My theory on electronic devices, and other equipment is this. If you attempt to design a product that does multiple tasks (i.e. MPEG4, mp3, cell phone, corkscrew, etc.) then you will not be able to make the device perform any one of the tasks with great success. Aspects of each task will have to be compromised in order to create a cost effective device.

I think you're right, but I believe it's as much a marketing issue as anything. Sometimes, pushing too many features can dilute the overall message; "an excellent music player (with added features)" sounds better to me than "a device that does everything".

With consumer devices, they all need a 'killer app' (for the iPod, it's a music jukebox, for smartphones, it's the telephony) that convinces people to buy it, once they're hooked you can start adding features and value.

That, IMO is why PDAs have struggled, they've tried to be a one-size-fits-all solution, without focusing on just one compelling application.

[Lanbrown]

How about $60 for the player, storage extra?

[arn]

Originally posted by blueflame
i wonder, with the ipod hdd sizes getting bigger, and an almost definite 80 hdd soon, might there be ipod with pixlet compression. then you could watch your own dvd's on your ipod? doesnt pixlet convert a 4 gig movie into a 256 meg file? this seems completely feasable to me.

other than this, i dont see a real use for pixlet for the average consmer

That's because pixlet is not for the average consumer

Pixlet has the same data rate as DV. DV stores hone our of video in 13GB. Sure, the pixlet is higher quality, but it's not meant for end-user video watching.

Common reference points (all at differing resolutions/quality, but relatively standard usage rates):

Pixlet = DV = approx 13GB per hour of video
DVD = approx 4GB/hour
Divx = approx 300MB/hour

Pixlet is of much higher quality than the latter two.... so is a compressed well... but is not something you want to carry around with you.

arn

[trose]

I didn't read the whole thread, so it may have already been mentioned.

Sony is not only going up against Apple, the powerhouse in the portable audio player arena, but also against Nintendo, the powerhouse in the portable gaming arena.

Nintendo dominates portable gaming even more than Apple does portable audio(no, I don't count CD's as porta--skip--skip--skip--ble).

The only thing Sony has going for them is the "cool" factor. It won them the Console wars (atleast these last couple generations).. it could do it again.

I have a feeling though, that Nintendo will not just sit still while their biggest and most succesfull franchise is attacked, likewise for Apple and their huge dominance with the iPod.

I say this thing has a 25% chance at best of overthrowing the iPod, and 15% on the Gameboy.

[nazariteguitar]

Originally posted by 1macker1
Who knows what the battery life will be. I say bring it on, due to the fact that it will make Apple drop the price of the iPod. I dont think the sony 'mp3/video/telephone' will do any harm to the ipod market. Didn't they see how sega's NGAGE flopped.

Just thought I should correct you on a few points;)

the PSP will NOT have a phone
N-gage is made be Nokia not Sega, although Sega is developing games for it.

It's an honest mistake, I just want to make sure wrong info isn't passed on.

[greenstork]

Originally posted by the_mole1314
I'd bet my life that Apple comes out with a 5gig $99 iPod before the end of the year.

Never going to happen. $200 is probable IMO and $150 is a *huge* stretch.

[billyboy]

Apple have got the best bar none high end digital music player. If you like, it is the music player equivalent of their G5 dual processor computer. In order to maintain the integrity of iPod as the best, and also in an attempt to draw the 70% "ipod mimic" market towards Apple, why not bring out a $99 player ie the music player equivalent of the entry level eMac.

Somewhere down the iPod development line Apple took a right turn, went the expensive mini hard drive route. For a low end model, they could maintain basic iTMS compatability but use a smaller, cheaper storage method. When people get hooked on the experience on a mini $99 scale, they will upgrade to the full tooty as sure as night follows day.

[Lanbrown]

Originally posted by MorganX
edit: with the PSP rumored tos upport AAC, this could be enormously good news for Apple if they can workout a Fairplay-AAC license agreement with Sony. I have to believe that in time, iTMS will fail or become marginal and irrelevant rather quickly if it continues to only have 1 client device.

Nokia has at least one phone that can play AAC files, the 7700, but not yet available. Of course it looks like you have a Frisbee stick to your head when you use it as a phone though.

"RealPlayer: Playback and stream RealMedia (video and audio) and 3GPP-compliant content (H.263 and MPEG-4)
Music: supports MP3, AAC, RealAudio 7 and 8, WAV, MIDI, and AMR-NB file types. Keep your sounds organized with Nokia Audio Manager (NAM)"

Apple should try to partner with Nokia.

[Fukui]

Originally posted by MorganX
...this could be enormously good news for Apple if they can workout a Fairplay-AAC license agreement with Sony
Fairplay is licenced to Apple, so sony doesn't necessarily need to go to Apple to get it. If this is correct anyways....

Story (http://www.macobserver.com/comments/commentindivdisplay.shtml?id=34714)

You might also do a search for Veridisc and Fairplay to get their website.

[Lanbrown]

Originally posted by nazariteguitar
Just thought I should correct you on a few points;)

the PSP will NOT have a phone

Say's who?
"One of the key features of the PSP is 802.11b wireless networking for multi-player gaming. However, speaking at a news conference yesterday, Kutaragi said Sony will at some point add phone facilities,"

"Kutaragi also said that PSP will not be a single device, but a range of machines targeting different users."

[sethypoo]

Originally posted by trose
I didn't read the whole thread, so it may have already been mentioned.

Sony is not only going up against Apple, the powerhouse in the portable audio player arena, but also against Nintendo, the powerhouse in the portable gaming arena.

Nintendo dominates portable gaming even more than Apple does portable audio(no, I don't count CD's as porta--skip--skip--skip--ble).

The only thing Sony has going for them is the "cool" factor. It won them the Console wars (atleast these last couple generations).. it could do it again.

I have a feeling though, that Nintendo will not just sit still while their biggest and most succesfull franchise is attacked, likewise for Apple and their huge dominance with the iPod.

I say this thing has a 25% chance at best of overthrowing the iPod, and 15% on the Gameboy.

Nintendo just updated their GameBoy (GameBoy Advanced SP), so I'm not too sure how soon they'll be willing to release a brand new model/update.

However, Nintendo does make the majority of their profits from the GBAdvanced, and even more from the licensing fees they collect for every game made for the GBA. They won't sit still while sony tries to unseat them.

Nor will Apple. I just don't see Apple trying to make the iPod in to some sort of media circus, as the PSP seems to be.

[SiliconAddict]

BIG question. AAC support is all well and fine. Is it possible to support DRMed AAC which iTunes uses. holy crap this could be big. :eek:

[SiliconAddict]

Originally posted by Lanbrown
Say's who?
"One of the key features of the PSP is 802.11b wireless networking for multi-player gaming. However, speaking at a news conference yesterday, Kutaragi said Sony will at some point add phone facilities,"

"Kutaragi also said that PSP will not be a single device, but a range of machines targeting different users."

They could be talking VoIP.

[sethypoo]

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
BIG question. AAC support is all well and fine. Is it possible to support DRMed AAC which iTunes uses. holy crap this could be big. :eek:

Whoa.

Apple+Pepsi+AOL+sony=

One big monop...er, product. :eek:

[greenstork]

Originally posted by billyboy
Apple have got the best bar none high end digital music player. If you like, it is the music player equivalent of their G5 dual processor computer. In order to maintain the integrity of iPod as the best, and also in an attempt to draw the 70% "ipod mimic" market towards Apple, why not bring out a $99 player ie the music player equivalent of the entry level eMac.

Somewhere down the iPod development line Apple took a right turn, went the expensive mini hard drive route. For a low end model, they could maintain basic iTMS compatability but use a smaller, cheaper storage method. When people get hooked on the experience on a mini $99 scale, they will upgrade to the full tooty as sure as night follows day.

Man, this has been said 1000 times. Apple's profits come from the sale of hardware. It's how they can afford to sink tons of money into software/harware R&D. The cost of a 5GB dirve is $100. Why create a product that will lose them money. So they gain market share, so what. It's not like they make tons of money on the iTMS.

Here's some simple math.

7,000,000 songs sold (for the sake of argument)
$1 per song =
$7,000,000 revenue

67% to the record labels (according to Jobs himself)

leaving about $2,300,000 revenue for Apple.

Apple's total revenue last quarter = $1.7 billion (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2003/oct/15results.html)

So it's clear that iTMS is a drop in the bucket for their revenue. Apple earns it's money selling hardware like computers and the iPod (http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_news.cfm?NewsID=6472). Dropping prices so low that they don't earn money will hurt them in the long run becuase selling one iPod at a loss does not in any way guarantee them future revenues. Sure they convert one buyer, but that person may be happy with their iPod for years, just like most people are. How many repeat iPod owners do you know? I'm sure there are plenty here on this forum but for the most part, my guess is that most iPod owners have bought only one. All you have to do is look at the problem cell phone companies are having getting owners to purchase new phones and that's a heavily subsidized industry to boot. Apple has to ensure that it earns a buck and we reap the benefits of their continued innovation.

edit: fuzzy math

[JoE950]

Originally posted by nazariteguitar
Just thought I should correct you on a few points;)

the PSP will NOT have a phone
N-gage is made be Nokia not Sega, although Sega is developing games for it.

It's an honest mistake, I just want to make sure wrong info isn't passed on.

THANK YOU.. also i noticed some people seem to think this PSP is geared for playing music. as stated before, the $60 player is the competition for the iPod, the PSP, is in an entirely different market. please dont confuse that anymore. According to the specs, the PSP wont have a hard drive. anything with out a hard drive should be considered backwards developed at this point. if you want a crappy mp3 player that uses some compact flash card or whatever, then go to target, they have a bunch sitting next to the iPod. they look pitiful.

[Lanbrown]

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
They could be talking VoIP.

They are also in the phone business with Ericsson, Sony-Ericsson. How many people have VoIP at home? A game platform is not a business phone either. I cannot see VoIP as the phone functionality.

[Phil Of Mac]

Originally posted by blueflame
to the average non mac person, i think price does matter alot. apple would do very well for even a 1 gig ipod at less than 100 dollars like 99.99

I think someone else (I unfortunately can't remember who) made a great point on another forum. While a 1 gig iPod might be valued by the market at $99, the cost of production wouldn't be anywhere near $99. A 10 GB hard drive costs about as much to have as a 5 GB or even a 250 MB anymore.

All right, then let's switch to flash media. You'd get pretty cheap storage, unless you wanted to get a gigabyte of storage, at which point you're paying...more than $100. And that's for one gigabyte.

http://www.vtops.com/store/listCategoriesAndProducts.asp?idCategory=24

Ever since the beginning, the purpose of the iPod has been to play your entire music collection, or at least as much of it as you want with you at any given time. If you have the capacity of flash media, what you end up with is an MP3 player that's more expensive than a CD player for hardly any more capacity. And MP3-CD players will be a better value.

If Apple could release a $100 iPod, wouldn't they? The answer is yes. The problem is, it's not possible yet.

Originally posted by Lanbrown
They are also in the phone business with Ericsson, Sony-Ericsson. How many people have VoIP at home? A game platform is not a business phone either. I cannot see VoIP as the phone functionality.

VoIP interconnects with the legacy phone network.

[1macker1]

Read the article.....it say the PSP will be the WALKMAN of the future.
Originally posted by JoE950
THANK YOU.. also i noticed some people seem to think this PSP is geared for playing music. as stated before, the $60 player is the competition for the iPod, the PSP, is in an entirely different market. please dont confuse that anymore. According to the specs, the PSP wont have a hard drive. anything with out a hard drive should be considered backwards developed at this point. if you want a crappy mp3 player that uses some compact flash card or whatever, then go to target, they have a bunch sitting next to the iPod. they look pitiful.

No way will it be doing VoIP

[Lanbrown]

Originally posted by Phil Of Mac
VoIP interconnects with the legacy phone network.

I know how VoIP works, I have implemented in a fortune 10 company. The PSP is a game device, not a business phone. The majority of VoIP products are in the business workplace and there are even fewer wireless VoIP installations. So since this device is for the consumer market, where would they be using VoIP? At home? Well, they would have to buy additional equipment. Given the number of open access points that you can get Internet access off of, imagine someone that installed wireless VoIP at home and didn't know how to secure it. Can you say free calls?

If the PSP happened to be a business phone, then wireless VoIP would make sense, but not a consumer phone, at least not at this stage.

[Sabenth]

Dont know if anyone has posted pics links yet so here ya go PSP PHOTOS LOOKS LIKE A CIGAR HOLDER IF YOU ASK ME (http://gamesradar.msn.co.uk/news/default.asp?subsectionid=157&articleid=66153&pagetype=2)

[Phil Of Mac]

Sony is a Japanese company.

The Japanese have consumer VoIP. (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.08/pipedream.html)

So yes, I can see this using VoIP. Maybe only in Japan, but Japan is a big market.

[jjblair]

Originally posted by greenstork
Here's some simple math.

7,000,000 songs sold (for the sake of argument)
$1 per song =
$70,000,000 revenue


How does 7 million X $1 = $70 million?
Is this quantum mathematics?

Anyway, here are some interesting things to consider aside from 'fuzzy math':
Sony Music is up for sale. They want out of the industry, and were almost bought by Vivendi/Universal until Vivendi bought Dreamworks instead last week. This would seem to indicate that the battle over what's more important, hardware sales or piracy, has been decided.

And consider this in terms of Apple's market share for MP3 players: It doesn't matter who competes. iPod is the now product associated with portable MP3 players as much as "Walkman" became a generic term for portable cassette players, or as Coke became synonymous with cola softdrinks. Apple did what is the most important rule of marketing, which was to be first with a completely new type of product. Hertz was the first company to do what it does. Other companies might do it better or cheaper, but Hertz still has the largest market share to this day. This rule seems to apply to almost any industry. Xerox is another example. When was the last time you asked for a 'mimeograph' or a 'Toshiba' of something?

Sony can however make a good deal of money by being number 2, because nobody has clearly established themself in this poistion yet. But if they only use their proprietary music format and eliminate the ability to play MP3 or AAC, they are going to lose their ass faster than you can say "Betamax".

It's a quarter past too late for anybody to unseat Apple as the de facto king of MP3 players. Unless Steve Jobs does anything as stupid as John Sculley did during Mac vs. DOS says, or unless somebody comes up with something so radically different and more appealing, I wouldn't lose sleep any sleep over this one. While companies like Sony continue to lay people off and sell off their assets, Apple hasn't had a single lay off and has actually increased their R&D spending. It has apparently paid off, as evidenced by all the behemoths who are trying to play catch-up now.

[SiliconAddict]

Originally posted by Lanbrown
They are also in the phone business with Ericsson, Sony-Ericsson. How many people have VoIP at home? A game platform is not a business phone either. I cannot see VoIP as the phone functionality.

Yes but with a WIFI enabled device its possible and potentially free.

[1macker1]

Wouldnt this require a user to have some type of broadband account.
Originally posted by SiliconAddict
Yes but with a WIFI enabled device its possible and potentially free.

I just dont see the market.

[Kid Red]

Originally posted by Sabenth
Dont know if anyone has posted pics links yet so here ya go PSP PHOTOS LOOKS LIKE A CIGAR HOLDER IF YOU ASK ME (http://gamesradar.msn.co.uk/news/default.asp?subsectionid=157&articleid=66153&pagetype=2)

Actually, it looks like a playstation competitor to Gameboy. I think saying this is an iPod competitor is laughable at best. I don't see P Diddy getting jiggy with that gameboy keychain thing dangling from his pants' belt loop.

This is not an mp3/iPod killer, this is a gameboy killer. But oh wait, does it even play video games? hahaha. Come on, video on a keychain? Yea, while I'm at the mall restroom taking a crap maybe.

[Lanbrown]

Originally posted by Phil Of Mac
Sony is a Japanese company.

The Japanese have consumer VoIP. (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.08/pipedream.html)

So yes, I can see this using VoIP. Maybe only in Japan, but Japan is a big market.

I say GSM/WCDMA support. Greater appeal and could offer support for wireless game play with remote users without having to be near an access point. The use of it as a phone while they are home would be rather limiting.

Sony would rather have people use PS2 and the upcoming PS3 at home and have the PSP when they are out.

[jjblair]

Originally posted by leet1
They weren't the first to come out with a hard drive mp3 player if thats what you mean, think this has already been said in this thread.

But the important thing is that they were the first to come out with the product that everybody bought. maybe Hertz wasn't the first to rent cars, but they were the first to be succesful at it. Sony came out with Mini Disc first, but nobody cared, and the media was not widely adopted, so it was inconsequential. Burton didn't invent the snowboard, but they were the first to popularize it and are still the largest single manufacturing snowboard brand.


And on another note:
If this hasn't been clarified, I just read the info on the PSP, and it is not the same as the $60 device that will play songs. I'm not sure from some posts if that's understood. Also, it appears that the PSP has a removable media drive that can hold 1.8 GB. Perhaps it's a mini DVD? Same as a Mini Disc but with muti layering and blue laser bandwidth?

[greenstork]

Originally posted by jjblair
How does 7 million X $1 = $70 million?
Is this quantum mathematics?



LMAO, my bad, I got so excited about my rant too. For some reason I was thinking album in my head.

Well this further proves my point that iTMS provides less than 1% of Apple revenue.

[Lanbrown]

There will also be more then one PSP available too. I say the player will be with no media; and in small print it will say batteries and memory stick cold separately.

[iShater]

Originally posted by tentimestwenty
That may or may not be the case but the reality remains, a $100 iPod with any functionality, even solid state memory would clean up the market. I'd buy one even if it had only 1GB of memory. I just want a measly 4 or 5 albums to take with me and I think most everyone else that hasn't bought an iPod is a similar market.

Exactly. I don't need all the space, I need a cheaper iPod for what I would like to take with me from the CD collection. $100 is a magical price point for such devices.

[billyboy]

Originally posted by greenstork
Man, this has been said 1000 times. Apple's profits come from the sale of hardware. It's how they can afford to sink tons of money into software/harware R&D. The cost of a 5GB dirve is $100. Why create a product that will lose them money. So they gain market share, so what.

Apple has to ensure that it earns a buck and we reap the benefits of their continued innovation.

edit: fuzzy math

Slow down matey. Great quote and all to knock me down in flames :) , but I expressly made a point about product differentiation. I understand the 5GB hard drive alone costs about $100, so of course that is a stupid business idea for a $99 player. I also see that the user friendly software is the vital part of the ease of use formula, and isnt that dear a component.

So the baby iPod would not be based around any sort of Toshiba hard drive but would have a modest capacity flash card of some description, for "only" several hundred minutes of tunes. It would have the same basic technology as a full blown iPod in respect of synching seamlessly with iTMS and iTunes - and it is the ease of use and the low price that is the winning hand - without costing Apple money.

So, if because of limited space people have to change playlists every other day, at least they know with the Apple player it´s only going to take seconds. Then when they are sold on the idea of the iPod, human nature takes over, the "inconvenience" of swapping tunes around begins to drag and they go for a full blown iPod, passing their $99 version on to little Johnny. Repeat the process.

Quite what storage card would be suitable I dont know, but Im only a thick ideas person

[MorganX]

Originally posted by jjblair
But the important thing is that they were the first to come out with the product that everybody bought. maybe Hertz wasn't the first to rent cars, but they were the first to be succesful at it. Sony came out with Mini Disc first, but nobody cared, and the media was not widely adopted, so it was inconsequential.

<g> Microsoft does that a lot too. <g>

Seriously though, I think what iPod was the first to do was to create a portable media player that fit into people's lifestyle. The combination of iPod + iTunes actually made large music libraries meaningful and more usable. The ease at which you can sort and organize a large library and create multiple use-oriented playlists is still un-matched and takes the genre from geek to everyone who lives with music.

[the_dalex]

1) Revenue and profit are two different things (you can't take revenue, subtract cost of goods, and still have revenue, it's now profit), but you are correct that iTunes provides very little of both when compared to Apple's overall performance.

2) Japanese markets are very trend and gadget oriented. This sort of thing will be gangbusters in Japan, especially if they put a picture of a hippo dressed in a panda suit on it, or something. They love complicated products that don't do one thing very well, but instead do many things adequately. We are task and process driven, they just want a cute journey to wherever they end up (talking about consumer culture, not the Japanese work ethic).

3) Flash cards can't write nearly as fast as hard drives, IIRC. At least, not the cheap ones, which is what they would need to use to keep costs down to what consumers would like. The iPod transfers data SO quickly via firewire...

4) Sony is suddenly pushing price point for their products. This isn't their usual strategy, so I'm very skeptical of their abilities to make this profitable. I think they are going to take a big loss trying to get into a market that they failed miserably in previously.

[ALoLA]

At least as far as capacity is concerned. Sony's device at 1.8 + whatever the memory stick has will not be enough. Before getting an iPod, I thought even 5 GB was ridiculous for a portable music player. But after using one, I can see why there is a need for 10, 20, even 40 gigs. Sony's device may do a lot, but if you have to carry a bunch of sticks and discs around, it will not be practical. I think one of the best selling points about the iPod is that I have a large portion of my entire music collection on one small, slick, easy-to-use, portable device. It'll be fine as a portabe gaming unit, like the GameBoy, but it'll never be an iPod. :D

[greenstork]

Originally posted by the_dalex
1) Revenue and profit are two different things (you can't take revenue, subtract cost of goods, and still have revenue, it's now profit), but you are correct that iTunes provides very little of both when compared to Apple's overall performance.



Since Apple does not provide profit #'s for the iTMS, the next best measure is to compare revenue. Bear in mind that I wasn't saying you can compare revenue to profit, this is apple and oranges. I did compare revenue of the iTMS to their overall quarterly revenue to illustrate that iTMS is only a drop in the bucket.

You'll notice that the #'s I quoted were comparing the revenue of one department to overalll quartely revenue, apples to apples, so to speak.

My guess is if you stated talking profits, it would be quite apparent that the iTMS is a huge money loser vs the fact that Apple made $44 million in profit last quarter. Hence the need to sell iPods at a premium and decreasing the likelyhood of any iPod less than $200-300.

[jettredmont]

Originally posted by leet1
This would fall into my area. I'd be willing to shell out $100 for 1 gig of space, but thats all I'd spend on a portable music device. Would beat the hell out of the Gym's music! lol

The average person wouldn't need more than 1 gig anyways, thats a lot of space and a lot more than I would need to listen to in one day.

I'd prefer flash memory or something similar over a harddrive<they tend to skip I've read on long runs>, but I wouldn't be too picky for that price. Sony makes high quality products, so thats no worry here :D

If 1GB is enough for you, a flash-based device would be your best (only) option (aside from the ubiquitous CD-MP3 players, but those skip 1000x more than an HD-based player).

On the other hand, I DON'T think that the "average" consumer will get an iPod-ish experience out of a 1GB device. I don't know ANYONE who can fit their music for a week or more in 1GB. 1GB is about ten CDs (downcoded to 128kb AAC or MP3). Hardly the basis of a "music library in your pocket" style device.

iPod users don't spend fifteen minutes each morning figuring out which tunes to take with them, and another fifteen minutes waiting for yesterday's selections to get dumped and today's selections uploaded to their iPods. iPod users don't spend four hours a day kicking themselves for forgetting to put that one cool song they can't get out of their head on their iPod.

I really just physically can't imagine a 1GB iPod.

Actually, I can. It just really sucks.

[leet1]

iPod users don't spend four hours a day kicking themselves for forgetting to put that one cool song they can't get out of their head on their iPod.


lol, I guess I don't need the "Ipod" experience. I've probably only downloaded 6-7gigs of music over the past 5 years or so. 1 gig<10 CDs worth> would be great for me.

[cryptochrome]

The PSP will be cheap. Because they're going to sell it at a loss.

The PS2 was designed as a game player. This device was also designed to be a game player. As it turns out, the PS2 also makes a perfectly good DVD and CD player, and is used as such. The PSP with some extra storage space can be turned into a perfectly good digital video and audio player, and with a chip and antenna a mobile phone.

Most of the necessary hardware was there to begin with. Adding just a little more hardware gives you a lot more functionality. This is a big part of why convergence devices make sense. The PS2, for instance, with a net connection, hard drive, and tuner chip or two gains:
a full fledged PVR
a way to play shareware games
a digital satellite/cable decoder, obviating the need for a separate box and many confusing wires
Browser, email, and other net capabilities.
+ more.

And I should mention, the PS2 is sold at a loss. Sony makes all their money licensing games for their system (which is why you don't see shareware for it). The PSP will be the same way. It may cost less than a $100 in the store, but it will cost more than twice that to make it. And they'll be making them in bulk.

[greenstork]

Originally posted by leet1
lol, I guess I don't need the "Ipod" experience. I've probably only downloaded 6-7gigs of music over the past 5 years or so. 1 gig<10 CDs worth> would be great for me.

Don't underestimate the power of the full library shuffle on an iPod, it is a beautiful thing.

[leet1]

Originally posted by greenstork
Don't underestimate the power of the full library shuffle on an iPod, it is a beautiful thing.

If it wasn't $300, it would be a beautiful thing to me, hehe.

[1macker1]

Yeah I'm with you, I think I have about 2 gigs of music. I've burned every good song off every CD that I have, and I've purchased about 30 songs from iTMS
Originally posted by leet1
lol, I guess I don't need the "Ipod" experience. I've probably only downloaded 6-7gigs of music over the past 5 years or so. 1 gig<10 CDs worth> would be great for me.

[BaDBoY]

i think thats a bunch of bull to make people think that this player sony is making is gonna be JUST 60 dollars. i mean COME ON! the god damn memory stick for 128 costs about $60 Bucks itself! think about it.. it like youre buying the memory and you get the player for free. either that or they are gonna raise the price drastically when it comes out and they realize they will be kicking themselves in the ass, OR... the entire player will be cheap shiet. LCD screen, 1.8 GB player all these other features.. FOR $60 dollars??? hell the best CD player in teh market costs well over 100.

Edit: I just noticed that the price did indicate it will be AS LOW AS $60... meaning that it will certianly be higher.. but what can you get for 60 dollars? i bet that inorder to get all these "amazing" functions of this "walkman of the future", youre gonna have to dish out well more than jsut 100... even 200! maybe the hard drive/memory will be from 512 Mb to 1.8 GB.. but to get the bigger one you gota pay tons more.. not to mention LCD screens arent cheap. for one of those little LCD screens for the playstation.. they cost well about 100.. if youre lucky to find it on ebay at tha price.. lotta poeple over price that crap

Even if that thing becomes a cell phone.. would i wanna carry a clunky big thing holding on my ear and asking.. why are you holding a big box on your ear.. i would feel weird to say.. "oh im on the phone." reminds me when motorola made those really big fat phones... i think you know what i am talkign about.

[rspress]

I don't see a 100 dollar iPod anywhere in Apples near future. As the Sony article states, they cannot make hard drive models that cheap and neither can Apple. Apple can make a 5gig model for around 200 bucks and they should do this. It would be a great entry level iPod and the sales would skyrocket....it would also steal sales away from Apples higher priced, bigger margin iPods and therefore will probably not happen until a real competitor comes forth to challenge the iPods size, software, ports and coolness. Sony could be the one to do that.

Sony products are some of the best and most respected in the business and if any company can give Apple a run for the money in the MP3 player business it will be Sony. Not surprising, Microsoft still does not have a clue....too busy smashing Linux I guess.:rolleyes:

[manu chao]

I know it is a simplification and it is not true in all cases, but I would assume that a 2GB or 5 or 10 or 20 or 40 GB 1.8'' harddrive would cost about the same to produce. The manufacturer sets the prices such that the price for the lowest capacity modell covers at least the variable costs (i.e. not including costs like the factory building) and the prices for the larger versions according to what the market allows for.

The price of the smallest drive could be set lower to make it unattractive for competitors (who might only be able to produce the smaller harddrive) to enter the buisiness or higher to prevent the smallest modell to cannibalise sales for bigger drives.

That means there probably is no smaller iPod because the don't want to sell a loss-making product, or they don't want to loose sales of the bigger, i.e. more expensive, versions.

[Gyroscope]

Heh what have poor Apple got themselves into? :) :P

Now they will have to compete with Sony in music business, Dell in computer hardware business ,and Microsoft in software business. All of which are No1 in their respectable categories.

Man sometimes it seems that whole world is just standing there waiting to pick Apple's brain and then to tear them apart.

[manu chao]

Originally posted by 1macker1
Yeah I'm with you, I think I have about 2 gigs of music. I've burned every good song off every CD that I have, and I've purchased about 30 songs from iTMS

I have about 11GB of music, 90% from my own CDs, and I don't think I own a lot of music compared to my contemporaries. I know people who have 10m (33ft) of music (CD cases stacked on top of each other).

[johnnyjibbs]

The PSP will not have a 1.8 GB hard drive/flash memory, etc on it. This "1.8 GB" is surely talking about proprietry DVDs (probably 8cm ones, similar to GameCube's own proprietry 1.5 GB mini DVDs) that you buy with games on - i.e. removable media. Nintendo is looking into mini DVD media for the GBA's successor, and Sony is probably looking into a similar thing.

I think some people are confusing these game media discs as being 1.8 GB included space for storing music.

A games machine follows the Gilette model, where they make a loss on the hardware so that you buy it and then have to buy their games at high profit margins. The iPod doesn't follow this, as profit has to be made on the hardware (you could say iTMS is the software but, as pointed out, is nowhere near the same revenue or necessisity to make it viable). The PSP follows the Gilette model, not the iPod's model, so they are different markets and have different functions.

When the PS2 was being hyped, they were saying how you could connect this and that to it - i.e. much more than a games machine. In reality, none of this (other than watching DVDs) materialised. An "iPod killer" is probably just what this machine is touted as possibly being capable of, but never happening.

[Dahl]

I probably have about 12m and I have sold about the same length over the years. :D Music is the only thing I still "collect", no more DVD's or books. OK, I do get some DVD's like Nemo and other out of this world titles and I do get some art books, but I don't buy everything anymore. I want less stuff, not more.

[medea]

well by looking at the concept photo, it certainly does not look like it will only run $60. crock.

[Lanbrown]

Originally posted by BaDBoY
Even if that thing becomes a cell phone.. would i wanna carry a clunky big thing holding on my ear and asking.. why are you holding a big box on your ear.. i would feel weird to say.. "oh im on the phone." reminds me when motorola made those really big fat phones... i think you know what i am talkign about.

Have you seen the NGAGE? Looks like a Frisbee stuck to your head.

Medea,

That's the prototype for the PSP not the iPod competitor.

[rdowns]

Originally posted by jettredmont
If 1GB is enough for you, a flash-based device would be your best (only) option (aside from the ubiquitous CD-MP3 players, but those skip 1000x more than an HD-based player).

On the other hand, I DON'T think that the "average" consumer will get an iPod-ish experience out of a 1GB device. I don't know ANYONE who can fit their music for a week or more in 1GB. 1GB is about ten CDs (downcoded to 128kb AAC or MP3). Hardly the basis of a "music library in your pocket" style device.

iPod users don't spend fifteen minutes each morning figuring out which tunes to take with them, and another fifteen minutes waiting for yesterday's selections to get dumped and today's selections uploaded to their iPods. iPod users don't spend four hours a day kicking themselves for forgetting to put that one cool song they can't get out of their head on their iPod.

I really just physically can't imagine a 1GB iPod.

Actually, I can. It just really sucks.

I couldn't agree more. As a recent new owner of a 15GB iPod, it is just unbelievable. I ripped my entire 250+ CD collection, iTunes purchases and even my downloaded pirated music and have about 10 GB in my iPod. I use it mainly at work and love listening to my ENTIRE music colection. Never seemed to play most of it when I had to hunt down the CD from the butt ugly (since removed) CD storage cabinet.

I've had it 3 weeks now and still haven't heard the same song twice. Smart playlists are awesome.

Back on point, it is designed to carry your music collection with you, not a small numer of songs that need to be changed frequently.

[gwuMACaddict]

Originally posted by Gyroscope
Heh what have poor Apple got themselves into? :) :P

Now they will have to compete with Sony in music business, Dell in computer hardware business ,and Microsoft in software business.




and they will still do everything better than any of them. the ipod is a dream of an mp3 player. dont even talk to me about dell 'hardware'. and once i tried keynote, there was no going back to photoshop... i just need a better word processor from apple...

i digress... i dont see this new sony as a 'threat' or an 'ipod killer'. its going to make apple work harder and put out a better product. old steve-o doesnt like to play second fiddle when it comes to inovation.

[sethypoo]

Originally posted by leet1
If it wasn't $300, it would be a beautiful thing to me, hehe.

The $300 price tag is a reflection of the iPod's quality. Price it too low, people will start to think anyone can have one. It's something people save up for: a lofty goal.

Think: Mercedes-Benz CLK vs. Ford Escort

[rdowns]

Originally posted by leet1
If it wasn't $300, it would be a beautiful thing to me, hehe.

$300 is peanuts. Tell me you couldn't find 5 dollars a day that you piss away and buy an iPod after a month. Or $2.50 for two months. Most people could easily do that if they really wanted one by cutting out overpriced coffee or eating cheaper lunches.

[sethypoo]

Originally posted by rdowns
I couldn't agree more. As a recent new owner of a 15GB iPod, it is just unbelievable. I ripped my entire 250+ CD collection, iTunes purchases and even my downloaded pirated music and have about 10 GB in my iPod. I use it mainly at work and love listening to my ENTIRE music colection. Never seemed to play most of it when I had to hunt down the CD from the butt ugly (since removed) CD storage cabinet.

I've had it 3 weeks now and still haven't heard the same song twice. Smart playlists are awesome.

Back on point, it is designed to carry your music collection with you, not a small numer of songs that need to be changed frequently.

Gone are the days of removable media.....sniff sniff.

I miss cassettes, CD's, even the occasional 8 track or vinyl.

We're losing our roots, it seems to me. Removable media is where all this came from.

Jeez, I can't remember the last time I bought a CD.....:(

[leet1]

Originally posted by sethypoo
The $300 price tag is a reflection of the iPod's quality. Price it too low, people will start to think anyone can have one.

Think: Mercedes-Benz CLK vs. Ford Escort

Are you kidding? lol....


Price it low and more people will buy it. Who cares if anyone can have it? Its an MP3 player, not a freaking status symbol.

[sethypoo]

Originally posted by leet1
Are you kidding? lol....


Price it low and more people will buy it. Who cares if anyone can have it? Its an MP3 player, not a freaking status symbol.

Um, yes it is a status symbol, look at the price. And don't try to tell me a $50,000+ car isn't a status symbol. Everyone who comes out with a new MP3 product calls it a "iPod killer." They wish they could have the kind of *status* Apple has with their iPod.

:rolleyes:

[leet1]

Originally posted by rdowns
$300 is peanuts. Tell me you couldn't find 5 dollars a day that you piss away and buy an iPod after a month. Or $2.50 for two months. Most people could easily do that if they really wanted one by cutting out overpriced coffee or eating cheaper lunches.

$300 is not peanuts, $300 is $300. I'd never spend $300 on an mp3 player, but thats just me. I'm a college student and already only spending $5 a day, lol. I can't cut anymore outta that.

[sethypoo]

Originally posted by leet1
$300 is not peanuts, $300 is $300. I'd never spend $300 on an mp3 player, but thats just me. I'm a college student and already only spending $5 a day, lol. I can't cut anymore outta that.

You've got a point, but not all the way.

Save just a little, or, gasp, get a job and bam, you'd have a nice 10GB in no time.

I'm a college student too, I know what it's like living on next to nothing. Not much fun, but hey, it builds character!:rolleyes:

[the_dalex]

Just one point about the iPod's superiority that many people tend to forget...

For a power user, it's a good idea to partition some space on your iPod to install a copy of your OS (and Norton Systemworks) for troubleshooting system problems. I've seen machines of all types refuse to boot from a CD when their OS is shot, but they will work with external hard drives. Plug in your iPod, hold down option while booting, select your firewire drive, and bam! You can run the system from your iPod, backup data to your iPod, run Norton, and save a machine that otherwise would have required disassembly to get the data from the hard drive.

Can Dell do that with their DJ? Can Samsung do that with their thingy? Nope. I'm damn sure Sony can't...

[leet1]

Originally posted by sethypoo
Um, yes it is a status symbol, look at the price. And don't try to tell me a $50,000+ car isn't a status symbol. Everyone who comes out with a new MP3 product calls it a "iPod killer." They wish they could have the kind of *status* Apple has with their iPod.

:rolleyes:

A $300 Mp3 player is not a status symbol. Im sorry if you bought it for this reason. Now, if you bought it to hold all your mp3s, listen to them, ect. your doing good :D

A $50,000 car can be a status symbol "in some areas" lol but that has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Where talking MP3 players.

[sethypoo]

Originally posted by the_dalex
Just one point about the iPod's superiority that many people tend to forget...

For a power user, it's a good idea to partition some space on your iPod to install a copy of your OS (and Norton Systemworks) for troubleshooting system problems. I've seen machines of all types refuse to boot from a CD when their OS is shot, but they will work with external hard drives. Plug in your iPod, hold down option while booting, select your firewire drive, and bam! You can run the system from your iPod, backup data to your iPod, run Norton, and save a machine that otherwise would have required disassembly to get the data from the hard drive.

Can Dell do that with their DJ? Can Samsung do that with their thingy? Nope. I'm damn sure Sony can't...

Wow, thank you so much! That post is why I joined MacRumors.com. Again, thanks.

:) :rolleyes: :D

[rt_brained]

"While crediting Apple and its chief executive, Steve Jobs, for the success of the iPod, Sony executives said the PSP would allow consumers to watch music videos as well as listen to digital tunes.

"We are taking on iPod with our new device," another Sony executive said. "We are coming at him (Steve Jobs) on that front.""

Wrong, Sony boneheads. First of all, if you're willing to waste valuable space on your device to store memory-sucking music videos with your tunes, you're a nimrod. The technology already exists anyway. You can Sorenson a whole movie and store it on a PDA, but I don't know that there's a huge demand for that capability when you can watch DVDs on a notebook computer with better quality and far less hassle.

Typical hype from the folks at Sony who honestly think there's a passionate brand-loyal consumer culture out there, on par with Apple's, willing to buy into anything they produce at whatever cost or restriction that follows.

[leet1]

Originally posted by sethypoo
You've got a point, but not all the way.

Save just a little, or, gasp, get a job and bam, you'd have a nice 10GB in no time.


Have a job. Paying for insurance on a bike,car and the bike payment, as well as my breakfast<which never happens, lol> , lunch, and dinner.

[sethypoo]

Originally posted by leet1
A $300 Mp3 player is not a status symbol. Im sorry if you bought it for this reason. Now, if you bought it to hold all your mp3s, listen to them, ect. your doing good :D

A $50,000 car can be a status symbol "in some areas" lol but that has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Where talking MP3 players.

The $50,000 car idea was a "metaphor," maybe you'll learn about them in college! :)

Read any tech article (cnet.com, zdnet.com, so on) and you'll find that they almost always mention the idea of the iPod being a status symbol. "The signature white ear buds" one of them recently wrote, I believe.

Yes, yes, (yawn) I bought the iPod as a MP3 (er, AAC) player for the music reason. I was pleasantly surprised to find it was in fact a *status* symbol.

Oh, jeez, slow down on the posts, leet1. This isn't a popularity contest. :rolleyes:

[rdowns]

Originally posted by leet1
$300 is not peanuts, $300 is $300. I'd never spend $300 on an mp3 player, but thats just me. I'm a college student and already only spending $5 a day, lol. I can't cut anymore outta that.

Sorry, I won't cut you any slack here. College students are poor and an iPod is a luxury. Want an iPod? Get a job, any job, you'll have the money in no time.

Too many college students today won't work. I remember college well, it wasn't that long ago. Plenty of free time; working part time would not kill them.

Want an incentive? Get a job, buy an iPod and I'll send you an iTunes GC. A college mind is a terrible thing to waste.

[rdowns]

Originally posted by the_dalex
Just one point about the iPod's superiority that many people tend to forget...

For a power user, it's a good idea to partition some space on your iPod to install a copy of your OS (and Norton Systemworks) for troubleshooting system problems. I've seen machines of all types refuse to boot from a CD when their OS is shot, but they will work with external hard drives. Plug in your iPod, hold down option while booting, select your firewire drive, and bam! You can run the system from your iPod, backup data to your iPod, run Norton, and save a machine that otherwise would have required disassembly to get the data from the hard drive.

Can Dell do that with their DJ? Can Samsung do that with their thingy? Nope. I'm damn sure Sony can't...

Can I do this on an external FW drive? What s/w would I use to partition it? I assume I'd have to reformat it and lose what's on there now. Any help appreciated.

[leet1]

Originally posted by sethypoo
The $50,000 car idea was a "metaphor," maybe you'll learn about them in college! :)

:rolleyes: god! really? I do hope so! I wouldn't think that my education would reach such high and complicated terms as "metaphor"

This isn't a popularity contest. :rolleyes:

wtf?
I heard first place gets a dual G5. I was trying my hardest and to find this out: heartbreak. lol

[alamar]

Originally posted by jonapete2001
IMO they have the best pc laptops, the best stereos, the best tv's, vcrs dvd players. this is a serious threat to apple they better step it up a noch or 2 before sony can do its thing.

Just look at what they did to nintendo when the playstation was released.

The playstation was the result of YEARS of planning, and development, courting game publishing houses, and a completely new tactic (video games purely for the 20+ crowd). This is not the same beast.

Sony is again looking to make a new market with this product...but in the playstation case the timing was better. Sega was ready to be thwarted, the market was beginning to stagnate, and Nintendo believed itself to be an unstoppable force, but was not willing to take the games to the gamers with money. So Sony kicked the crap out of them. This is not the case now. Apple is safe.

We are not talking about a Sony Ipod, we are talking about a Gameboy SuperAdvance. Sony has a huge hill to climb going up against the Gameboy. This is not an emergency (for all those here willing to car bomb Sony HQ for daring to try and make a product to compete with Apple, and support the capitalistic Ideas...).

You can't unseat the iPod in a day, and even if they did...big stuff.

[Squire]

Lots of good points made here. I like the concentration/portability issue.

I would have no need for this device, though, despite my love of PS2 gaming.

I'd much rather have this:

http://www.gamespot.com/all/news/news_6076490.html

It's a HD-based TV recorder/DVD player/24x DVD writer/PS2.

Squire

[sethypoo]

Originally posted by leet1
:rolleyes: god! really? I do hope so! I wouldn't think that my education would reach such high and complicated terms as "metaphor"

I do too, leet1, I do too.:rolleyes:

[jettredmont]

Originally posted by 1macker1
And that's exactly the point, I'd get one for $99 just to see how it works. You cant beat that with a bat. Apple better do more than music, or it's going to be on the short end of the stick.

I'd love to watch the matrix on this device. No it wont be sitting in the livng room playing for my guest, but at school (during breaks), at work(during lunch), and just to show off. It would be great.

You're still talking about the ZVUE, right?

I don't think you'll be watching The Matrix on the max available (according to their PDF) 32MB MMC card!

What a waste of a hundred bucks ...

[the_dalex]

I believe you can use Apple's Disk Utility to partition it, but I'm pretty sure you'll have to re-sync your music. That doesn't take long with an iPod, luckily.

It will work with any other firewire hard drive. If you have another mac, hold down "T" on it when it boots and it turns it's hard drive into a firewire hard drive via it's firewire port. VERY handy.

We did this the other day (I run a university bookstore computer center) with our G4 tower and LCD iMac when the tower was shot. We turned the iMac into a firewire drive and selected it from the tower when booting and holding option. The tower booted with the iMac's copy of Panther, so we backed up the tower's data onto the imac and erased the tower's hard drive for a fresh re-installation.

I also used this feature today to install Panther on an old Indigo iMac with a bad CD drive. Turn the iMac into a firewire drive, plug it into a Powerbook, run the Panther install on the Powerbook but select the iMac's drive as a target. Voila! It's amazing what this feature allows you to do. Windows would FREAK if it tried to run without specific drivers (XP actually wouldn't run at all because the OS would see that it was a different computer and not let you, thank you Microsoft) but the Mac handles it without any problems.

THAT'S why I love Apple.

[jettredmont]

Originally posted by cryptochrome
The PSP will be cheap. Because they're going to sell it at a loss.

The PS2 was designed as a game player. This device was also designed to be a game player. As it turns out, the PS2 also makes a perfectly good DVD and CD player, and is used as such. The PSP with some extra storage space can be turned into a perfectly good digital video and audio player, and with a chip and antenna a mobile phone.


Major difference though: you can get a significantly better DVD and CD player as a standalone unit cheaper than the PlayStation.

This keeps people from just buying PlayStations instead of DVD players.


Most of the necessary hardware was there to begin with. Adding just a little more hardware gives you a lot more functionality. This is a big part of why convergence devices make sense. The PS2, for instance, with a net connection, hard drive, and tuner chip or two gains:
a full fledged PVR
a way to play shareware games
a digital satellite/cable decoder, obviating the need for a separate box and many confusing wires
Browser, email, and other net capabilities.
+ more.

And I should mention, the PS2 is sold at a loss. Sony makes all their money licensing games for their system (which is why you don't see shareware for it). The PSP will be the same way. It may cost less than a $100 in the store, but it will cost more than twice that to make it. And they'll be making them in bulk.

BUT: selling at a loss ONLY works when it is NOT reasonable to use the hardware WITHOUT buying the blades, er, games.

If Sony sells an MP3 player that is loss-leading to be cheaper than other MP3 players, and people can buy said hardware without investing a dime in revenue-positive games, Sony will lose money big time. If they're subsidizing $100 on every box going out the door, how many boxes can they sell to the MP3-player market before their shareholders revolt?

Note that this is also why MS is not very happy that people (even though its only dyed-in-the-wool geeks now) are buying Xboxes and turning them into non-game-playing Linux boxes. You can only afford to give away the razors when the very act of owning the razor means your customer will be buying blades for it.

[jettredmont]

Originally posted by leet1
$300 is not peanuts, $300 is $300. I'd never spend $300 on an mp3 player, but thats just me. I'm a college student and already only spending $5 a day, lol. I can't cut anymore outta that.

Point being: if you can save up $100 for something that isn't very nice to look at and isn't pleasant to use and will break after a year or the first time you dance around the dorm with it, then you damned well CAN save up $300 for an iPod.

It just takes three times as long :)

On the other hand, if you're putting that $100 device on a credit card where you pay the minimum balance forever and will someday erase in a bankruptcy decision ... well, then you really shouldn't be in the market for a $100 player either ...

[pedro taquelim]

What? $60 for a music player? Someone is joking with us...The cheapest iPod is $299!! Come on... Hey Apple give us an iPod for $59!

[jjblair]

Originally posted by rt_brained
"...Sony executives said the PSP would allow consumers to watch music videos as well as listen to digital tunes.

"We are taking on iPod with our new device," another Sony executive said. "We are coming at him (Steve Jobs) on that front.""

You see, here's what is stupid about this brand of logic: I can listen to iPod a the gym, while snowboarding, in my car, on my stereo ... wherever. It's the same experience no matter where I am. I can't watch the newest Outkast video while I'm driving my car or snowboarding. Besides, who the hell wants to watch a music video on a screen that's smaller than a Post-It note? Or a feature movie, even. Music is indespensable. Video isn't. This is the dumbest idea ever. Maybe it will be alll the rage in Japan. I just can't see it here.

[Fukui]

"We are taking on iPod with our new device," another Sony executive said. "We are coming at him (Steve Jobs) on that front."
Its hilarious they are attacking Jobs personally with this thing. They must really have their screws on straight...:rolleyes:

[GregA]

Originally posted by dongmin
Crappy quality of not, Sony has done a pretty good job of selling the PS2. If they really integrate this PSP with the console, Sony will sell a ton. I'm pretty amazed by the feature list, but I'm sure it'll cost you. Their mp3 players and clios aren't exactly cheap. <snipped stuff about $60 for basic, $400 for amazing>That makes alot of sense.

Surely sony's flagship phone is a taste of things?- the P800 (http://www.sonyericsson.com/au/spg.jsp?page=P800_Upd_WS&B=IE&PID=9940&LM=PSM_V&gal=105&start=0). I'm thinking that such a small screen could mean a DVD or music video could be heavily compressed (though you couldn't play it on a normal TV)

Originally posted by greenstork
Man, this has been said 1000 times. Apple's profits come from the sale of hardware.The fact is, if iTMS sells iPods, then Apple must consider at some level that the extra profit (generated in iPods) belongs to iTMS. (Likewise for OS X, preloaded onto Macs).

I guess if the iTMS was selling music for Sony's device, they'd have to consider what they were getting out of it. Does it make enough money itself? What about switchers via iTunes for Windows downloads?

I personally want Apple to work with everyone, and vice versa - with the ultimate Apple experience found by using all Apple parts.

Originally posted by Scottgfx
We have all heard the news about Sony lately. They are not in as strong a position as they once were. Imagine a future where Apple could become a much larger consumer electronics company. Would you buy an Apple television set? Or an Apple toaster oven? Mmmmm, perhaps not. :) I'd definitely buy an Apple Tivo if it happened (I'd buy a Tivo if it was here in Oz). Extras would be nice - stream video from my Mac? Satellite decoder?. The way Apple subcontracts now, I think Apple has contacts and the branding to make a move in all parts of this market if they wanted.

Back to Sony and the iPod - I think it's great to have some healthy competition there (though I want prices that are realistic for a company, not a loss leader to squash competition!). May the best device get sold more, and the competitor find ways of doing their own better.

[Raidiant]

if it offered good games and mp3 too...i'll buy it. I would very much like to play classics from a memory stick on a portable ps2 that can serve as a mp3 player, and even better phone

[w00master]

Originally posted by Kid Red
Anyone read the specs? It;s a 1.8g HD and a memory stick. Not going to store that many mp3s, and who wants to watch video on a tiny screen?

Sorry, the iPod does one thing and does it better then everyone else. Sony is going to try to kill it by doing 5 things and not come close to doing the mp3 as well as Apple and doing cheap meaning not much profit. Am I missing something? This sounds like a personal issue, they also mention taking it to "steve jobs".

#1, it does NOT have a harddrive. It's using a 1.8 gig "UMD" which is removal. Much like a CD, DVD, etc.

w00master

[Blaaze]

now that I think of it, maybe it is viable for Sony to sell this thing at $60. It runs on these Sony branded UMD disks, which will probably run whatever you want it to using it's built-in firmware. The actual cost of the PSP probably goes towards actual hardware pricing it similar to a gameboy or something.

[Mr Dog]

Could anyone tell me if there is a third party plug in for i tunes that will let me add music to my sony mini disc MZ-N707. Or any way of doing this.

Thanks

[rt_brained]

About a year i bought a NetMD. For anyone who dose not know what the NetMD was, it was a portable player that i think could of been competion for the ipod. I was based off sony's MiniDisc format, and offered 2 1/2 hours off music on one disc. With a battery life of well over 20 hours of play this device seemed like a winner. I figured for the price of $1 a disc, and $150 for the player i was saveing my self money vs. buying an ipod. ( I wasn't a mac user a the time)

What i ended up doing is wasting about 155 dollars.

The software that the thing came with is pure junk, and it is not avaiable for mac. In fact because of the way the made the device there is now way that even a third party could write a driver the device.(It transfered the music encryped). And again i must say again the software was junk. The software required that you import and re-encode all you music to a sony "format" and placed in to a libary. After that when you wanted to "check out " (you could only check out a song three time, and if you failed to check that song back in it was lost forever) a song it then coverted the file to ATRAC3 and then encryped it for transmision. While this was happening the software always crashed, or hung(thanks windows).

Sony is paranoid about music priating( They are a major record label), and any music device that involes sony will suck for the following reasons.

1. Your music will have to be re-encoded in to their format(Just imagaine how much sound quality will be lost). They are not just going to give up all their ATRAC research.

2. You will have to use there very crappy software(OpenMG). Which is not very open.

3. There will be no mac support.

But anyway. I am sure that i have not covered every thing in my little rant, but this is the best i can do. I am sure sony will screw up the DRM for this thing, and even though it will be a cheaper, sony will kill it with its bad software and DRM.

I am sure other people can say other things about sony's digtal music product(NetMD).

(forgive the spelling and grammer)Funny, I was going to crack a joke about the upcoming Sony PMP...something like, "The new Sony PMP will require using 1) their new proprietary music format, 2) klunky Sony software and 3) storage on those stupid mini discs that they can't seem to get the world to adopt."

[rt_brained]

With so many stupid names for music players out there, I wonder why no one bothered branding one with: "PiMP" (Portable individual Music Player).

[Penman]

I'm now a 2%'er. One of those Apple users prepared to put up with high prices and poor performance (relative to PC systems at equivalent prices in real-world applications) in return for design, style, quality and integration.

Most people (off this board) are not. Apple has an excellent product in the iPod. A clear category killer if it's kept up to date. This means catering to the market - not telling people that they don't need more capacity (I do) or video (I might). Unfortunatly Apple has never in its history turned a superior product into a commanding market share and kept it there. I doubt the iPod will be different. In time a major player (like Sony) will produce a device that anyone who isn't obsessed with the Apple logo will appreciate as value. It doesn't have to be better. Most people don't buy the best of anything. They buy something okay that gets the job done and doesn't cost too much.

To 99% of people an iPod is a digital Walkman. $300 is simply too much (as for $500 - that's the cost of an entire PC). Even $250 is a lot.

Apple can either compete (which it probably won't) or can watch it's early lead evaporate in time and end up producing Rolls-Royce protable devices for its existing niche market.

Logically I think it's clear which path it'll take. Apple always does (and I'm a fan). To suggest Sony can't out-engineer Apple given time has to blinkered. Do you remember when they were knew to the videogame console market? They own it now.

If Apple are #1 in 5 years in the portable market it'll be as a division of Sony, not a competitor.

I'm an fan, just a pragmatist.

Penman

PS This was written on a $3K, 1Ghz notebook that's not yet a year old. Smart buy? For people like me yes. Do I love it? yes. Would I reccomend it? Most people can't afford it.


It's amazing how often this argument comes up for me on these threads but for me, if it is a choice between Apple gaining market share and Apple remaining financially successful, I chose the latter.

Historically, it has kept Apple one of the most innovative companies of the past two decades. If you think about it, they've always been this way. As long as you can vertically integrate, and maintain high profit margins on your products, you can afford to sink a bunch of money into new ideas.

So for those who want to get a cheap, flimsy mp3 player, buy a Sony or a Dell DJ. For those who want a quality product, pay more for an iPod, innovation isn't cheap and nobody likes a copycat. Ask yourself why you use Apple in the first place.

[cyks]

I love my 20G iPod...and use it regularly at the gym- but always wish I could bring it into the pool with me. After having music while using weights and running- it just seems quiet doing silent laps.

Even the "made for the gym" Nike MP3 player isn't waterproof... just slightly resistant....

Hopefully with new competition- new features will be forced to be looked at.... waterproofing would be one i'd be interested in.

[the_mole1314]

I'm now a 2%'er. One of those Apple users prepared to put up with high prices and poor performance (relative to PC systems at equivalent prices in real-world applications) in return for design, style, quality and integration.

Most people (off this board) are not. Apple has an excellent product in the iPod. A clear category killer if it's kept up to date. This means catering to the market - not telling people that they don't need more capacity (I do) or video (I might). Unfortunatly Apple has never in its history turned a superior product into a commanding market share and kept it there. I doubt the iPod will be different. In time a major player (like Sony) will produce a device that anyone who isn't obsessed with the Apple logo will appreciate as value. It doesn't have to be better. Most people don't buy the best of anything. They buy something okay that gets the job done and doesn't cost too much.

To 99% of people an iPod is a digital Walkman. $300 is simply too much (as for $500 - that's the cost of an entire PC). Even $250 is a lot.

Apple can either compete (which it probably won't) or can watch it's early lead evaporate in time and end up producing Rolls-Royce protable devices for its existing niche market.

Logically I think it's clear which path it'll take. Apple always does (and I'm a fan). To suggest Sony can't out-engineer Apple given time has to blinkered. Do you remember when they were knew to the videogame console market? They own it now.

If Apple are #1 in 5 years in the portable market it'll be as a division of Sony, not a competitor.

I'm an fan, just a pragmatist.

Penman

PS This was written on a $3K, 1Ghz notebook that's not yet a year old. Smart buy? For people like me yes. Do I love it? yes. Would I reccomend it? Most people can't afford it.

Comparing video games to this is rediculous. Sony released a 32-bit system before Nintendo did, and only a little before Sega. Sony's hardware sucked, it was their 3rd party developers who saved them.

Sony can't out-engineer Apple. I'll say that now. Yes, they can throw a 20gig hard drive in a plastic case and add controlls, but that'll just eliminate Dell and Gateway, not Apple. Also, for the Walkman, it was the first and it became a brand name. Same thing with the iPod. People know the iPod name and use it to describe all MP3 players.

If the PSP, or PMP (which was cancelled), does compete with the iPod, it'll be amazing. Cell phones, watches, nor other devices have not beat the iPod. The PSP will be a gameing device. I'd be amazed if it does half of what Sony says it can do.

I'm witholding more opinions untill the PSP does come out.

[Penman]

Okay - I worked in the gaming indusrty when the PS1 was launched. It did not 'suck'. People took to it immediately. All consoles live and die by the developers and their games. Sony had Tomb Raider early on. It was rather popular I recall.

I like Apple products. A lot. Let's not drink the cool-aid though. There's no magic to what they do. Skill, flair - not in question. To imagine that becuase they were first and best they will always be first and best is ridiculous. Apple don't do 'deep' engineering anymore. They build boxes to put other peoples chips in, on PC standard buses running modified open-source software. It's smart. It's how they survive. It works.

If Windows sucked as bad as people here would have you believe Mac would be a more significant OS. Apple stuff is often better but it's too damn expensive for the average consumer. You can argue it till you're blue in the face but go to your local Frys (I'm in CA - i'm sure you've something similar) and look at how people shop. They want speed and value - not design and subtlety. As a switcher myself - you only realise how nice Mac OS is when you've been using it 3 months and stop wondering why it doesn't work like Windows which you're used to and thus seems logical. Until then it's a bit of a pain and you keep looking for control that Apple's decided we don't need. (OS X printer drivers are the devil's work)

I'm going to buy a 60Gb iPod the moment they hit dirt. I have too much music for anything else. Is it worth $500? Of course not. It's overpriced, like BMW's, Mercedes, Opus 1, Starbucks Coffee and Nike sneakers.

Just admit it. We like Mac's becuase they're luxury items. Apple are a niche player and always will be (unless they change their pricing model and compete for the average Joe). You can enjoy your Apple stuff without thinking that everyone else on the planet's a moron who should know better. Other companies make excellent stuff too. Even other computer products. Have you seen the JDM Sony 2lb carbon fibre notebooks? They make everything else seem clunky.

We've chosen a great solution for many things that happens to be an expensive one which makes us dependant on a single, ocassionally slow, supplier.

Penman.

Comparing video games to this is rediculous. Sony released a 32-bit system before Nintendo did, and only a little before Sega. Sony's hardware sucked, it was their 3rd party developers who saved them.

Sony can't out-engineer Apple. I'll say that now. Yes, they can throw a 20gig hard drive in a plastic case and add controlls, but that'll just eliminate Dell and Gateway, not Apple. Also, for the Walkman, it was the first and it became a brand name. Same thing with the iPod. People know the iPod name and use it to describe all MP3 players.

If the PSP, or PMP (which was cancelled), does compete with the iPod, it'll be amazing. Cell phones, watches, nor other devices have not beat the iPod. The PSP will be a gameing device. I'd be amazed if it does half of what Sony says it can do.

I'm witholding more opinions untill the PSP does come out.

[jhomayne]

If Apple would just make a 2GB $100 iPod they'd kill every possible competitor including portable CD players.


i live for the day that one of these is released

or even one that i could just whack 50 songs on for a day

though i suppose the argument against this is that i could just get a current iPod and import a 50song playlist

hmmm

[Digital Dubb]

I told yah xDANx, KooStarck, patmcfar8, 12thgear and etc you guys know who you are. Sony is trying to get the inside and do it for themselve. I recall most of you all replying that this was a good Idea for them to work together. Now Sony is competiting..mmmmmmmmm....lets see what happens next. Good Job Supporters "Know the Game, not the Business"

[briankonar]

competition for the ipod can only be a good thing. it will force apple to innovate in order to remain competitive. in 4 generations of ipods (including the mini) the ipod has offered nothing substantially new over my 5 GB original ipod. They have a new connector, some improved software, less battery life, and a cover on the firewire port. Current "competition" is still working on creating a competitive user experience, I don't even know of a competitor for Macs (iRiver?).

I've heard rumors of apple getting into the projector market, as well as apple creating a video ipod that includes a built in projector, so you can just shine it on the wall wherever you are. these two rumors combined with stonemedia looking into the viability of a new Newton and Steve saying 2004 is going to bring some nice new products....it's shaping up to be quite the video iPod. Please take my money! :D

[PalmHarborTchr]

Any thoughts as to how Sony could produce a rival product at such low cost?? How much storage do you suspect their device would have? Internal or removable storage?? Any word on a Sony sponsored download service? They co-founded PressPlay, which they sold to Roxio (now napster2). If they were to repartner with Napster, they would be competing with the Samsing player, which would be a serious conflict of interest. Any thoughts??

Yeah, you go to the Chinese government and tell them you would
like to hire chinese prison inmates to build your competitive product
to the iPod and you are willing to pay .25 per hour. The Chinese
Govt. looking for a way to support the prison system say, "Okay, you
give them .25 an hour and we bill them .24 an hour for bed and rice.
The prisoner happy because he is earning money...the chinese govt.
happy because we bill prisoner and Sony happy they can have unit
built for less than .50!" This capitalism is such good idea...we like it
fine. Most our prisoners be good workers ...most be there for 30 years
or more"

[doogle]

Its all good news. If SONY wants into the portable player market then Apple is more than vindicated and SONY's marketing people are saying the portable music market is BIG and going to get BIGGER. SONY is a real competitor (and possibly the only one capable) for Apple...Even if Apple is only left with 30-50% (optimistic) of the market once Sony appears, thats great.

Remember too that Apple will have a whole year (or so) to release more updates and possibly a Sony Killer before Sony even hits the market. The other thing to remember is that the Walkman was Sonys last big hit inot portable music, after that they have been quiet if not unsuccessful.

I agree with earlier comments- Sony software sucks bigtime and their attempts at integration with other hardware and software is a record of failure. We are the winners here.

[sonyrules]

I've noticed one dominant theme regarding this topic. Everytime an article is written regarding a new MP3 player, regardless of manufacturer or media outlet, it's always describd as some sort of "iPod killer". That is to say that the only model that any of them are compared to is the iPod itself. Where are the comparisons to the Dell DJ? Where are the comparisons to the Samsung Napster Player? These two models in particular were supposed to be iPod killers, and yet are rarely ever mentioned when HD based MP3 players are discussed. If the competition's so great, where is the mindshare (not to mention the marketshare)?

No kidding... Thats all you hear about, and there all talking about killing the iPod, but no one ever mentions these other so called "Great" MP3 devices.

[ingenious]

If Apple would just make a 2GB $100 iPod they'd kill every possible competitor including portable CD players.


id buy one

[neutrino23]

As far as the music player device is concerned Sony doesn't get it. iPod is not just a stand alone device. It is an extension of your computer and your CD collection (via iTunes) and it is an extension of your own created music (via Garageband) and it is an extension of a huge on-line music library (via iTMS). If Sony came out with a really well engineered player it would probably still fail because Sony doesn't seem to be supplying all of the other features that make iPod popular.

I also doubt that Sony will provide anything at low price. Historically, Sony products are fairly expensive. My own personal experience with them is that the quality was poor. I've spent around $10,000 on Sony goods and most of that no longer functions. The DAT deck still works (somewhat) after an out of warranty repair. I would be disinclined to buy another Sony product.

[Mainyehc]

And now, I'm a happy owner of a 20GB 3G iPod!


I am sure other people can say other things about sony's digtal music product(NetMD).


It wasn't a NetMD, it was an old but great MZ R-70, which could only record tracks in the ATRAC3 format, not even MDLP, meaning that the total record time for an 80' disc would be... 80'!
Still, it was a hell of a player/recorder. It was €250, and had a great full aluminum case, and two headphone jacks, one with remote plug (nowadays, the MD Walkmans carrying that price tag have an aluminum top cover and plastic bottom, or are all plastic, and even top level models come with only one headphone jack), plus a microphone jack and a combo optical/line-in jack. 30'' skip protection, great sound, small but nice LCD, blah blah...
I loved that thing, and I still miss a lot of their features when using my iPod... The two jacks (yes, I suppose I could buy a Y-splitter), the Mic jack, the fact that I could use my brother's MZ E-60 remote, (the E-60 is a player only, which hasn't an LCD in it's body but in the remote instead - I'd love to see an iPod remote with an LCD, that would provide some basic browsing functionality), and of course, the HUUUGE battery life (I had the original AA Ni-CD, plus two other Ni-MH, and of course, all the alkalines I could get my hands on)...
What have I ended up with? THIRTY-TWO MiniDiscs, which I keep in 3 11-disc Sony boxes... And I actually carried those 3 beloved boxes wherever I went!! I have no idea of how much each one of those boxes cost me, but they sure weren't cheap (like €40/$40(?) each!!). And besides, burning my "almost legal" mp3 using my old PC's line-out wasn't that fun, as it wouldn't be either with my iMac's line-out, or even the digital optical-in (great for track mark syncing though)...
When I decided to buy my iMac I was tired of the 1x transfer rate of my MD, but I wanted to keep my old discs, and maybe reformat them with a NetMD (indeed saving in discs, as I'm almost sure that those 32 discs, reformatted, would last me for a lifetime)...
But then I discovered it wasn't compatible with the Mac, and that was a great stab in my "relationship" with Sony (I thought I was a loyal Sony fan, having a Sony TV, Mini Hi-Fi, Tape Walkman - two, actually, 'coz my 1st was stolen -, two MD Walkmans - the R-70 and the E-60 -, consumables such as tapes and MDs, until I found that one is easily way more loyal to Apple products ;) )... So, as I am a switcher, I might as well switch to Apple as far as music is concerned. Right now, I don't think I would buy a device other than the iPod, even if I chose to buy a new PeeCee instead.
So... show off your iPods to as many people as you can, demo them if you get the chance (I actually do it unconsciously coz' I love to share my music library with everyone... I guess I'll get that Y-splitter soon :D )! IMHO, that's the best way to make people surpass that huge barrier that is leaving the "lusting over" phase, and get to actually buy an iPod. Heck, all my university colleagues are lusting over my iPod, I suppose if Apple dropped the mini's price down to $199/€199, their competition in the mp3 player market would be definitely blown away!
Most people I know won't get a Mac or an iPod because of its price (they already love it anyway)... However, give them an affordable iPod, and then we'll see if Apple should worry so much about competition... ehe! A 2 GB at $100 mini, and the 4 GB at $200 should suffice most people's needs (not mine, even though my iPod still has some 14 GB free space, I do believe I'll fill it in a couple of years), without cannibalizing the other three big ones. I don't believe they'll drop their prices that much, but anyway...
AS FOR THE PSP... I don't happen to have a Playstation, my only console is a NES, it still works and I love it! :p Yes, I know a few guys who have a Playstation I or II or both, and portable consoles like GB, GB color or GBA (don't actually know anyone who has a GBA SP)... But heck, they are A FEW people... It's a totally different market segment! I just DON'T like playing games, and I happen to be a music lover. Do you think I'd buy one of those gadgets?
Ok, when mere mortals like me ever think of buying a device like that PSP thing for playing movies and browsing the Web, then it's time for Apple to make the PowerPod (call it whatever you want), it shouldn't be that hard to come up with... It didn't have to have those super gaming abilities anyway, just a nice screen for, say, viewing photos (great for digital photography) and videos! (and this is reminding me of that "Newton revival" thread, but looked at from a different point of view... What about a sleek, yet affordable PDA-like thing for normal people, not just executives in suits? It would be a concept very different from a PDA, though... It could be a portable extension of your iLife, not your office, or your console ;) )
Face it, Apple is (one of) the best at nearly everything it's into, so, I think we should just expect even greater devices from them... Go Apple!

[spinko]

If Apple would just make a 2GB $100 iPod they'd kill every possible competitor including portable CD players.

But Apple won't do that untill it's too late, as usual :D

[johnnyjibbs]

But Apple won't do that untill it's too late, as usual :D
A 2GB $100 iPod would not only result in very little profit for Apple (despite using those new microdrives and huge volume sales) and would nicely kill the cool iPod brand in one fell swoop.

[jwgt]

Whatever Apple does in order to compete with Sony and others, they should make sure that you can change the ipod's battery without difficulties! The battery lasts only for about four hours and that just isn't long enough! That's why I love my Sony (1999) MD-Player: the battery still lasts for about 10-12 hours and with a replacement, I can stay mobile as long as I want to. That's why I'm not likely to buy the ipod.

[SonyorMacorPC]

Hi All,

Aren't you all a bunch of happy campers.

Anyway, just to let you know

- Sony is going to be providing an EMD service very soon (www.connect.com).

- Sony has decided not to enter the MP3 player market but decided to adapt its' MiniDisc tech to the current climate with a think called Hi-MD. Hi-MD removes the restriction origionaly placed on the Net MD {check out restrictions, analogue to computer transfer is now allowed and most importantly, 1gb worth of music (or docs, vids, software etc..) one to one cheap disc. The supplied software is now properly developed (finally) but needless to say it is not Mac compat. Check your local Sony site for details/

-The ATRAC format has been improved and I quote

"Short for "Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding 3 plus", ATRAC3plus is an enhancement of Sony's original ATRAC3 compression technology originally developed for the MiniDisc format. This latest version analyzes longer periods of audio signals to obtain more detail on input signals and also introduces a newly developed algorithm that achieves optimal bit allocation for a wide range of audio signals. The result is higher quality sound at higher levels of compression. Connect, Sony's new music service which is due to launch in the spring of 2004 will support the ATRAC3plus format."

No joke, it is really good I have tried it out, bit for bit it is far superior to the MP3 format.

So, i.Pod will not take over the market (not just because of price, the MiniDisc walkmans have a lots of other features which will make ideal for home users, jo soaps, song writers/bands, researchers, linguistic, students recording lectures and on and on).

Although, I am thinking about get virtual PC for my Mac, getting software is a pain in the ars* Lets face it a Windows world is much easer, (for the poorer mac owner of course).

John.

[Dahl]

So, i.Pod will not take over the market (not just because of price, the MiniDisc walkmans have a lots of other features which will make ideal for home users, jo soaps, song writers/bands, researchers, linguistic, students recording lectures and on and on).
Who knows what the future will bring, I'm sure Apple will update their iPod just like most companies do, so the iPod probably have just as good a chance as anybody ?

[MacQuest]

...So, i.Pod will not take over the market...

I haven't looked through the rest of this thread yet so if their is a Sony product called "i.Pod" that is coming/is out, then I apologize in advance.

However, if you are referring to an actual Apple iPod, then I fail to see how it "will not take over the market" considering that it already dominates it with a distant lead over all competitors combined.

...Lets face it a Windows world is much easer...

Oh well, so much for your credibility.

[MacQuest]

...in 4 generations of ipods (including the mini) the ipod has offered nothing substantially new over my 5 GB original ipod. They have a new connector, some improved software, less battery life, and a cover on the firewire port...

Are you serious?

The same $399 that you paid for that 1G iPod now gets you 8x more hard drive, a significantly thinner and lighter product, solid state touch pad navigation [I hate the now wobbly scroll wheel on my 1G iPod] controls that are a lot better ergonomically [hated twisting my thumb downwards to acces the play/pause button] , and a much better display.

Just to name a few.

[MacQuest]

If Apple would just make a 2GB $100 iPod they'd kill every possible competitor including portable CD players.

Hey, if [insert name of quality car manufacturer here] sold $10,000 cars, they would kill every possible competitor including General Motors and all of its subsidaries.

No it wouldn't. So they won't. Like everything else in life, quality costs.

Apple = Quality Control = Reliabilty = User Satisfaction.

[Dave00]

I'd buy one even if it had only 1GB of memory. I just want a measly 4 or 5 albums to take with me and I think most everyone else that hasn't bought an iPod is a similar market.

If you want a sub-$100 MP3 player to take along 4-5 albums, get a portable MP3-CD player. You can get up to 700 megs or so on there, and for alot less than $100. Cheapest 1Gig CF memory available is around $200, per DealRam. 2 Gigs is $400+, and 4Gig is $1000+. Thus, solid-state memory can't compete with an iPod yet, at least in the 1G+ market. A $60 MP3 player would have to be 256M, or max 512M, and even that would be pushing it given today's CF prices.

It seems unlikely that Sony could put a dent in the iPod market given that Dell, with their direct-marketing and bundling programs, has done very little to crack the market. Also, whenever you see an MP3 player in a (non-MP3) commercial or movie, it's always an iPod. Always.

Plus, you can download photos to your iPod. Just wait until they also have the capability to display those photos, which will probably be coming soon.

-D

[Urdam]

I agree

[rob_ppmax]

i dont think this will beat it.


http://mmcafe.telnet.or.jp/tgs98f/tgs_sony.htm

looks too like a tamagotchi.

[GregA]

I agreeWhat do you agree with?

I noticed your a newbie Urdam. It's an easy trap to fall into - you read 100 posts with many thoughts and opinions, and you see something that you agree with and say so. But we don't know which post you were reading. It's more frustrating though if you write 4 or 5 thoughts and someone replies "that's interesting, what makes you say that" and you don't know which thought interested them, much more difficult to reply.

Rather than click "Post Reply", click "Quote" and the message where you clicked Quote will be included (like I quoted yours above).

Welcome to the thread :)

[MacQuest]

What do you agree with?...

I'm pretty sure he was agreeing with Dave00's post right before his? Although it is a good idea to quote the post, or at least a portion of it, that you agree with just in case someone sneaks in a post just before.