SanDisk Baits Apple And Woos Rockbox

An anonymous reader writes "CNET reports that SanDisk is courting open source developers to port Rockbox to its popular MP3 players. SanDisk is currently the world's second most popular MP3 player manufacturer after Apple. Rockbox is an open source OS for most major MP3 players. The article also talks about SanDisk's subversive new anti-iPod advertising campaign which calls iPod owners 'iChimps' and uses a 'street graffiti style' to create the illusion of a 'counter-culture uprising against the iPod'. The writer says, 'SanDisk is the first company to market its player as an ideological rather than technological alternative to the iPod. To do so is to fight Apple on their own terms.'"

Comments

Might as well cut out the middle man

[Jeremi]

Oh goody, a corporate-manufactured "cultural backslash" to a corporate-manufactured "cultural movement".

I vaguely remember the days when culture had something to do with people, not just competing marketing departments...

Re:Might as well cut out the middle man

[McNally]

Oh goody, a corporate-manufactured "cultural backslash" to a corporate-manufactured "cultural movement".
I vaguely remember the days when culture had something to do with people, not just competing marketing departments...

Or maybe you just think you do..

Re:Might as well cut out the middle man

[GlassHeart]

I vaguely remember the days when culture had something to do with people, not just competing marketing departments...

Would this be the days when a diamond was forever, or the days when an apple a day kept the doctor away? Corporate manipulation of popular culture, despite your low user ID, probably predates you.

Re:Clever Campaign.

[Distinguished Hero]

Differentiating by making iPod users seem like sheep [idont.com] is a pretty effective idea.... perhaps!
The funny thing is that anyone who changes their mind based on this stupid marketing campaign really is a sheep.

Re:Clever Campaign.

[ePhil_One]

Apple got it's dominant position largely through a clever (and cool, and the early) advertising campaign.

Apple got its dominate position by creating a effective and user freindly UI to a useful and stylish bit of hardware. If the underlying UI & Hardware weren't up to the task, the ipod would have fallen flat when the first generation of users didn't like them. I owned a pre-ipod player, it had a painful UI, so despite its slick hardware, I hardly ever used it and bad mouthed it to freinds.

Yuck.

[Rob T Firefly]

"'SanDisk is the first company to market its player as an ideological rather than technological alternative to the iPod. To do so is to fight Apple on their own terms.'"

"Fighting Apple on their own terms," they say? I see it as more of a "sinking to their level."

the campaign is quite hysterical

[X_Caffeine]

Since it has that sort of stink of knee jerk "anti-corporate subversion" advertising (see David Foster Wallace's E Plurabus Unam), it fails to astroturf. The graphic mentally reinforce "ipod ipod ipod ipod" in the viewers subconscious. In the end, it just makes you feel sorry for all of Apple's competitors.

Variety of Models can be Confusing

[abscissa]

Psychologists have consistently shown that people actually prefer fewer choices to more choices. It just makes life easier and more straightforward, even though it is counterintuitive.

Part of Apple's strength is that there aren't ten trillion different models with model numbers to purchase, only 3 that come in difference sizes. Has anyone seen Creative's lineup of MP3 players? They have an MP3 player for every occasion.

Copying one part of Apple's marketing strategy alone is not sufficient to match their unparalleled marketing genius.

Their right but

[Coeurderoy]

Currently the SanDisk line required Window XP and WMA 10+
So let's say it's tito raging against staline, or Franco against Musolini.
If they offer a rockbox version and find some distributors willing to support music and video distributions in some open format i'll be able to aplaud.

Right now I'll keep my PMA400 (archos PDA+Player Linux based :-))

Re:Clever Campaign.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

The funny thing is that anyone who changes their mind based on this stupid marketing campaign really is a sheep.

You know, now I think about it, perhaps such a negative (and as others have pointed out, blatantly astroturfing & subculture mining) campaign won't work so well.

I do partially agree with you - I think anyone who changes their mind and buys a sandisk based on this stupid marketing campaign really is a sheep, but I think someone who sees this campaign and just thinks about it a little more next time they buy a mp3 player is not....