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Dell Announces New Music Player, Download Service
gotr00t writes "It appears that Dell Computer Corp. has announced that by the end of the year, they will have released their digital audio player, known in short as the 'Dell DJ.' Along with the player, there will also be a digital music download service. Looks like Dell is also joining Apple in the consumer products category."
Apple's stockholders should be storming Infinite Loop right now with pitchforks and torches -- in excluding Windows users, they went out and squandered the sort of lead (time-to-market wise) that CEOs have wet dreams about. And do you think they sold any more Macs than they would have otherwise? I doubt it...
All in all, I think Dell is in a great position on this one *assuming* that Microsoft doesn't get away with another violation of antitrust law ("You must include a desktop link to our music software or we won't sell you any copies of Windows").
I wonder what Dell will become if they escape from being Just Another Wintel vendor...
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Dell's going to try to cater to a business model rather than what the customers want, just like with their PCs.
If they (or iTunes, better yet) went and put stuff from Gainax, Toei, Viz, and many, many other anime companies, they'd make a bleeding _fortune_ thanks to all the otaku out there.
But if the service is anything like their computers... God help anyone who joins. I know from experience; I'm a technology administrator at a local primary school, and we're locked into Dell. >_
Even worse is that we're stuck paying three grand for their crappy Latitude D600s and that sweet new 17-inch Toshiba's five hundred less - three hundred, counting the upgrade to XP Pro.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Has anyone used a Dell PC lately? I've had to fix SO MANY fairly recent (ie shipped with Win XP) Dells that its not even funny. Now, admitadely, a MP3 player isn't as complicated as a space heater... *ahem* I mean, a Pentium 4 3GHz system... but, well, Dell seems to be almost entirley concerned with undercutting competitor's prices and offering slightly better #'s where it's the facts and figures that are a selling point (Basically, I figure that if you take an iPod, add 5GB of space and take $50 off their selling point, you've got what Dell wants to sell their device as). Of course, the catch is, it WON'T be an iPod, it won't have the same sex appeal, it won't have as nice of headphones, etc.
I've been under the impression, however, that Dell was still by enlarge a corporate/business PC manufacturer. I'm wondering what Dell is thinking, trying to do this... even their PDA's can be explained as trying to expand themselves into a 'one stop shop' for corporate computing, like some sort of HP or IBM, but a MP3 player? Weird. And I can't see how they'd expect to get Dell-like margins out of this.... which makes me think they've probably cut quite a few corners.... everywhere.
And my understanding from the Apple iTunes store was that the only way that Apple managed to pull it off was because of their goodstanding with the industry... being Apple and all. Were they a trailblazer making it easy for Dell, or is this just going to be a really inoperable service with none of the music I want?
I guess we'll see.
Must everyone follow a successful Apple product with their own half-assed, 'me too' version of it? This is why Apple now attempts to patent or trademark everything they do, people!
This Dell thing (the "metooPod"?) looks similar enough to the iPod that maybe Apple should seriously kick around the idea of filing another 'trade dress' suit, the way they did to take care of the Future Power e-Power or the eMachines eOne-- I mean, since practically everything else Dell makes is dark in color, it seems mighty suspicious to me that this is white. The screen size and placement looks almost identical. From the photo I've seen it also looks like the GUI is pretty similar. I see they've taken pains to move the battery gauge from the upper right corner (where the iPod has it) to the upper left corner-- reminds me of the difference between the Apple menu and Start menu.
At least the iPod has enough mindshare amongst the target market that no amount of B.S. marketing from Dell will make people think they did it first (I still remember Michael Dell's bullshit claim that Dell was the first company to build wireless networking into their laptops). The only way Dell will move very many of these things is by irrevocably bundling them "free" with their systems. I predict we'll start seeing a lot of them on eBay after a while, and then the product will die a quiet, relatively quick death like Dell's iMac wanna-be, the WebPC.
~Philly
The iPod pretty much dominates the market for MP3 players. Making the iPod compatible with PCs was a brilliant move, and it'll take a lot more than Dell's share of the personal computer market to shove the Dell DJ down people's throats.
Some market share stats for the iPod:
- Belgium: 38%
- USA (currently): 58%
There's been an explosion of iPod sales this year, fueled initially by the availability of an iPod version for Windows, and then later by a version that works with both Macs and Wintel PCs, and supports both FireWire and USB 2.0.And yeah, the Dell DJ really is ugly as sin.
Considering this shows the iPod at #1 in dollar market share and within 1.5% of #1 in total numbers sold, I'd say Apple's marketing ability is pretty good.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
They might have had good tech support, but have you tried calling them lately? They have really cut corners lately. There corporate support is still good, but there consumer report is absolute crap.
Actually, I believe it was a combination of the two. I saw a few recording industry quotes where they made it fairly clear that the only reason they gave Apple the go-ahead to sell their music online was because the limited market-share of Apple Mac users made a perfect trial audience. If something went horribly wrong and the public hated it, they could save face by knowing 95% of the public never used the service to begin with. It could easily be brushed aside as a failure only because PC/Windows users didn't get a chance to be a part of the program.
Once it was proven to work (and sell well), Apple was free to go ahead with developing a PC version of the music store without record company backlash.