Music-download sites give life to rival players

[MacBytes]

Category: News and Press Releases
Link: Music-download sites give life to rival players (http://www.macbytes.com/link.php?sid=20040920151357)
Posted on MacBytes.com (http://www.macbytes.com)

Approved by Mudbug

[jbembe]

According to a Reuters report, Apple's consumer electronics rivals are hoping that the proliferation of companies trying to sell digital music on the Web – in a format incompatible with the iPod – will cause sales of their music devices to increase.



Rio VP of marketing Dan Torres predicts that music service providers will be a "key driver" of device sales. He said: "The market is definitely heating up."

SURE, that's why Wal-mart, which is selling iPod incompatible music, will start offering the HP-iPod!!!

[iMeowbot]

Wal-Mart can afford to play both sides of the fence.

From the original Billboard article (erroneously attributed by Macworld UK to Reuters, who simply republished it)
Indeed, many of the new iPod alternatives are not trying to compete with Apple's player at the high end. Instead, they cater to consumers who are choosing between less expensive, lower-storage-capacity flash-media players that carry hundreds of songs and pricier, entry-level hard-drive players that hold more than 1,000 songs.
This is very much a market that fits into the traditional Wal-Mart customer base. A great many of their customers simply can't fit an iPod or other hard-disk player into their budgets, it would be a major purchase.

[bertagert]

This is very much a market that fits into the traditional Wal-Mart customer base. A great many of their customers simply can't fit an iPod or other hard-disk player into their budgets, it would be a major purchase.
Although true, these other players aren't that much less than the mini. I do understand that the 64mb-512mb players are around $100, but these players really don't cut it. A few people I know who have/had them and though it was cool at first, but they want to have more songs on their player and to not have to pick and choose the ones they wanted before the morning run.

This article is the same one that has been running around for a year. No player is going to do as well as the iPod for years. Apple did to the MP3 player as Sony did for the portable cassette (the Walkman). They will continue to sell a ton of them. You'll see these other companies go out of business or get swallowed up before they outsell Apple.

[Sol]

The iPod Mini costs as much as a flash-based player with less than a quarter of it's capacity. People who buy flash MP3 players are buying them because they are misinformed. If Walmart and Target want to reach the people who cannot afford a 4G iPod then they should sell the iPod Mini to them. Flash based players are over-priced novelty items.

[Abstract]

If the h-pod is what they mean by an iPod alternative, then sure, I agree with them. :p