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Microsoft, Sony Announce iPod Competitors
Pfhreak writes "According to the Denver Post -- Las Vegas section, a little over halfway down the page -- Microsoft will begin selling a $50 music player that will 'look and feel as good as the iPod' later this year. Yusuf Mehdi, a Microsoft VP, is quoted as saying that the player will give customers more choices than Apple."
In related news, Tetsugaku-San writes "The Register has the scoop on Sony's new portable audio/visual playback device. Impressively it plays MPEG2, MPEG4, BMP, GIF, PNG, TIFF and MP3 (finally they got the message Apple was gonna whoop em!) straight out of the box. Not as good battery life as I'd like to see, but real world tests remain to be seen."
The Sony device will be quite good, and will compare favorably to the iPod. The Microsoft device will be a POS, but will sell like hotcakes despite that, and in a few years we'll have fanboys and pundits gushing about how Bill Gates "innovated" the personal MP3 player.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Well, was bound to happen some day. Hard drive is probably the most expensive part of the hardware, and one can assume Microsoft already has software development covered.
However, even Dell's digital jukeboxes start at $200, and beating Dell pricewise is something out of ordinary (possible, but few have done it).
It looks and feels just like an iPod! (of course, they don't mention it working, sheesh).
I can just see MS coming out with something the size of an ipod, but with a tiny flash memory instead of a hard drive. And if MS markets it hard enough and makes it ubiquitous enough, the uninformed consumers will just slurp it up and think they're getting a huge bargin (despite there having been flash players that cheap for a long time).
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
Well, for $300 you can get 15Gb of storage on the low-end iPod. For $500 you can get $40Gb of storage on the high-end iPod.
The iPod/iTunes combo has become the core of my audio system. I don't have a boom box or home stereo system. I hook my iPod into my stereo TV when I want to listen to tunes downstairs. When I want to listen to tunes upstairs, I listen to the tunes through my computer's speakers. When I'm driving in the car, I plug in my tape deck adapter and go.
When I go for a run or go to work out, I take my iPod and have all of my tunes with me. So in that sense it's not just "a Walkman that doesn't need CDs or tapes." A CD Walkman is fine if I just want to listen to whatever CDs I happen to have with me at the time. But when I'm mobile, the last thing I want to do is decide which tunes I think I'll want to listen to at some point in the future. I want the whole range of my music library available.
I'm not rich. Not even close. I like my music a lot, but I'm not the music freak I was when I was in my teens. All the same, the iPod has really changed my listening habits quite a bit. It allows me to listen to a broader range of my own music than I otherwise would, lets me listen to music pretty much anywhere, and eliminates the need to haul around discs or tapes wherever I go.
Prices will doubtless drop on these devices as they become commoditized. Someday they'll drop to a price that will be acceptable to you. In the mean time, the investment in my iPod has more than justified the cost several times over for me (and for my non-technophile wife, who is an iPod addict as well).
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
However, even Dell's digital jukeboxes start at $200, and beating Dell pricewise is something out of ordinary (possible, but few have done it).
I would suspect that with a $50 pricetag, Micro$oft is losing some amount of money per unit. They want to make the money on the music sales. Like razors or cameras - make money on the blades/film.
"Whatever happened to outdoing your competitors?
Way to go MS. Aim low."
Oh right. Here's what the reverse would be:
"Um, M$, this is nothing like the elegance of the iPod. Way to go MS, blow it again."
I don't think it will have a similar capacity. I wouldn't even bet on it being a microsoft product, as that last bastion of journalistic integrity, as the apple turns has a linked story that has a bit more to chew on (but not much more) than the denver post article.
The quote about the $50 players was left out, but it does still contain the 'look and feel' quote, and he is obviously referring to third-party players that will be launched alongside a new microsoft music download service.
What kind of hard drive could a manufacturer possibly put in a player for less than $50 - none, maybe flash 128/256 - but that's already on the market, and has been for some time. Anyway, I choose to believe this to be just more Microsoft FUD until I see such a $50 iPod killer.
Or even better, be active: Hop over to iPod Linux and join the hackers there - for OGG support (& more!) on the iPod. 'Tis beautiful, this open-source thing of ours *sniff*.
668.5
Operator: And our next question we'll take is from Arik Hesseldahl with Forbes.com.
Arik Hesseldahl: Hi, Steve. Always concerned about -- not concerned, I guess, but wondering -- one of the previous questions was about revenue. I'm wondering if iTunes has reached the break even point yet.
Steve Jobs: Yes. The iTunes music store had a small profit this past quarter.
Arik Hesseldahl: Had a small profit. OK. Any interest whatsoever, since in the open source OGG Vorbis format?
Steve Jobs: We're certainly not getting any requests from customers for it.
Arik Hesseldahl: OK.
Source: Conference call, April 29, 2004.