iPod Killers For the Holidays 344
An anonymous reader writes, "MP3 Newswire has an excellent rundown of 29 new digital portables for the upcoming season. From the article:
'We have run the iPod Killers for Christmas/Summer series since 2004. In that time we [have] reported on 149 portable players and NOT one iPod killer from the bunch. That said, [this time] we may actually have a couple of genuine challengers to Apple. This holiday season will see Microsoft pump tens-of-millions of dollars to hawk their new Zune portable, and SanDisk's 8GB e280 flash unit is compelling high-end users. Both can realistically grab double-digit market share from the iPod... Whether they do or not waits to be seen.' The article also makes a good case as to why the Sony PSP should be included in market figures for digital media portables."
Let's make a rule (Score:2, Insightful)
Nothing can kill the iPod (Score:5, Insightful)
Trends (Score:1, Insightful)
That said, I would not willingly own any of these, and my next DAP will probably be a Cowon iAudio X5.
The PSP is a digital media platform, no doubt. (Score:4, Insightful)
The biggest problem with the article is thr's little data on price ranges for some objects. If the Ipod killer is stylish but costs 1000 dollars, what's the use? On the other hand, if it's 100 bucks and looks like crap (those football helmets for most people) who cares what size the ram is?
The Ipod is stylish, "inexpensive" but with a good sized ram. Now however they have made them more expensive then they should be but still easy to use. Competitors go for so many markets but they fail to miss the reason why the ipod is the killer is because it's a status symbol as well as a mp3 player, and it's easy to use (supposidly)
Reminds me of Futurama.. (Score:1, Insightful)
PSP is NOT an iPod Killer (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless Sony comes out with something similar to iTunes... the PSP is little more than a novelty music player. It's much larger than the iPod, more expensive (when you add a good sized memory card) doesn't hold as much music, doesn't have a music store, doesn't have the market share [must I go on?].
I could buy a nice 2GB iPod mini for $149... or hundreds more for a PSP with similar storage.
In my case, I purchased both... because they both have their areas where they excel. The iPod for portable music, the PSP for portable gaming.
Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Slanted review. PSP is overrated (Score:5, Insightful)
The writer (Richard Menta) has a well-known bias for PSP. For example: [mp3newswire.net]
PSP is the most user-hostile portable device out there, complete with awful, proprietary technologies usually found in Sony products. That's the reason why DS/Lite is eating Sony's lunch. The market even rejected PSP on its own turf.
Plugging PSP into the iPod competitor column is disingenuous. My cellphone can play MP3s too, I don't see it on there.
Re:Nothing can kill the iPod (Score:4, Insightful)
What has kept Apple pretty safe is the marketing, both in the media and in terms of "viral" marketing, and they've been a moving target in terms of design and cost. Apple made the iPod cool with nice, sleek aesthetics, good UI and making it generally easy for the less than computer-savvy to use, basically doing something very well, despite its unfortunate lack of certain features that competitors have built-in.
The Zune does seem to be an interesting product, I will grant it that. My own personal skepticism to whether I will like it is that the screen is rotated on its side. I've seen several phones and music players like that, the apparent contrast ratio for each eye is different because the screen in question was not designed to be used on its side like that. I also wonder whether offering the color brown might make people think that it's so hopelessly out of touch. Personally, I think there is a spectrum of other colors to choose, I've never seen brown succeed with any piece of consumer electronics.
Re:High Quality (Score:2, Insightful)
But in general, portables aren't really designed to be audiophile gear. They certainly could be, but the market really isn't large enough to justify the increased cost.
stylish compact cheap(free) music (Score:5, Insightful)
What Apple has done, and is continuing to do, is forcing the "content producers" to stop the chain of forced redundacy. My father replaced discs with 8 tracks with LPs. I replaced tapes with LPs with CDs. Now with music in MP3 form, will I every have to buy an old song again. No. Do I think it was easy for Apple to convince the music label to give up this cash cow. No, even though the labels had little choice because it was the only way to have sales. However, Apple has done us a great favor by insisting on a reasonable price.
Now that the labels have done the hard work, all the other electronic manufacturers are on the band wagon, claiming superior products. The problem is that I buy music in WMP format, I am not any better off than just buying a CD. So I have a choice of buying a player whose songs might have a limited lifetime, or a player that will likely be supported for a long time. Face it, MS has already given up on play for sure, so how long will those songs be useful?
But music isn't really the issue. Apple is moving against the movie studios, and right now video is not even a huge issue. A good quality half hour show is going to be twice as big as a good quality copy of a CD. Other than hugely popular shows, the level of sharing of movies is not as great as music. And despite the fact that the movie studios are not a present threatened, Apple is still forcing them to make deals that will force a new model of making money, even more so than the VCR, which was a huge cash cow, and now the DVD.
And the competition is responding by making MP3 players with radios and 'wireless' sharing, even though we have been sharing "wireless" for years. Maybe if it was a HD radio I might be impressed, but style has always been secondary to content. Look around you. The 12-25 year old demographic is thinking which one of these can I get free music on. It is like the the 12-25 demographic 20 years ago, buying computers based on what had free software. One kid buys a CD, rips it to WMP, ops, can't give load it onto another play for sure player. Another kids rips the CD to ACC. No problem loading it onto many iPods, or burning it onto a CD. As the past 50 years of widely profitable Music has shown, the kids will eventually buy music. And everyone will be rich beyond belief, but the labels ignore history. Just remember how much they hated MTV, and in a large part was responsible for the lack of music on MTV, even though MTV was arguably a major player in the revitalization of music. I see the same thing with iTunes, with people buying music for the first time in years.
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
The reasons are many and varied, but the main one is, quite simply, the problem it solves is not a problem many people actually have. Ogg was an attempt to create a compressed audio standard unencumbered by licensing, which could replace MP3. Which is all well and good, except I have never, since the day I first became aware of MP3, been unable to download a piece of free (as in beer) software which would encode MP3s for me. I have never been unable to do something with an MP3 because of the license the format is issued under. In short, MP3 is free enough for me.
If you look at the two other most widely used compressed audio formats, WMA and AAC, they both have (near) monopolies pushing them. The most popular digital audio player and online music store uses AAC. The OS preinstalled on 90+ percent of computers sold in the world ships with a media player that supports playing and ripping WMAs. Who is pushing ogg?
The market for ogg is basically limited to linux users, and most of us are using MP3 anyway. There is no reason for any company to push it, and really very little reason to use it. I know it's supposed to be highter quality, but A, I can't hear the difference, and B, why would I want a high quality compressed audio format? To play on my portable music player, which supports which formats? Oh, yeah.
*NOTE TO PEDANTS - Yes, I am aware of the difference between the ogg container format and the vorbis codec. I just can't be bothered to type ogg vorbis every time.
Re:High Quality (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:stylish compact cheap(free) music (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why exactly is the Ipod cool???? (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that people still don't get this is evidenced by the frequent "but I just want to drag files to it" comments here. That works for about 20-30 songs or videos, but fails when you are managing thousands of music tracks from multiple albums, audiobooks, and syndicated podcasts and videoblogs.
As to your condescension about "average people" associating iPod with MP3 player and buying it because they don't know any better, I think you'll find most buyers of the high-end, high capacity iPods are by and large at the elite end of savvy techies. Yes, maybe the average folk are attracted by the pretty colors and dancing cartoon advertising for the mid-range models, but don't dismiss the instinctive appeal of a very well thought out design of the unit itself. Many owners I know fell in love with it as soon as they held it - the brand is not all there is.
Just an observation.
iPod killer: Mobile phones with MP3 players (Score:3, Insightful)
At this point, the best contestant in the horizon seems to be the mobile phone which can play MP3s. My reasoning is as follows:
- Nowadays most people already have mobile phones.
- The cycle of replacement on mobile phones is about 3 years. Mobile phones that can play MP3s just came out.
- Carrying around just a mobile phone is always lighter than carrying around a mobile phone plus a dedicated MP3 player.
- Playing MP3s isn't such a special thing anymore. The technology is widespread and the processing power inside a mobile phone is more than enough for the task.
- Mobile phone manufacturers have an enormous amount of experience with things like saving batery power.
- The competition on making portable MP3 players with more storage has long reached the point of diminishing returns - unless you're going on vacations, carrying around weeks worth of music is of little use. One can already see the consumers changing tack by going for smaller devices which use flash memory and have less storage capacity (for example iPod Nano). This makes it easier to build MP3 playing functionality on a mobile phone with an amount of storage which is acceptable for consumers.
- Ever since the number of new mobile phone users started falling (because in some countries everybody and their cat has a mobile phone), mobile phone manufacturers have been trying to differenciate their products by adding cool new features to them. The ability to play MP3s is just another of those.
My expectation is that, slowly, as people change their old phones for newer ones, more and more people will have mobile phones that play MP3s (if it takes off like cameras on phones, people will be hard pressed to find mobile phones that don't play MP3s) and leave their dedicated MP3 players at home since there's no point in carrying around 2 devices that do the same.
Eventualy dedicated MP3 players (including iPods) will be a niche market.
Re:iPod killer: Mobile phones with MP3 players (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Important MP3 features (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Does not require Itunes or any other proprietary software; should show up as a drive letter in Windows XP and you can move songs that way.
2. Menu scrolls FAST, allows for browsing other songs while current one is playing..
3. Supports all song formats and allows for flash upgrade to support more.. ie.. Ogg Vorbis
4. It should be at least as tough as a cell phone.
5. Wait.. why the fvck isn't my mp3 player built in to my cell phone? How about we just do it that way. Cell phones are now mp3 and video players.
Re:Why exactly is the Ipod cool???? (Score:3, Insightful)
It works when the player can hold your entire music collection, you can just drag&drop everything at once. It breaks down when you want to fill a 20GB player from a 32GB music collection. Building an iTunes playlist for all tracks rated 3 stars or more and syncing it to an iPod takes about 5 mouse clicks. Putting the same set of songs onto a drag&drop player requires spending hours of quality time with Windows Explorer, Finder, or "man rsync".
Batteries... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't want crappy, low capacity, hard to change batteries. I want to swap a few AAAs (or AA) in 10 seconds, and have my DAP working non-stop. No need to be plugged-in to a cord for hours every day. Not to mention that battery capacity is continually increasing, and CD players that had a 10 hour battery life some 10 years ago, now have about 30 hours thanks to newer rechargable batteries.
Just add that simple feature to a couple DAPs, and you'll have something that might actually appeal to people like me who wouldn't ever consider an iPod. Meanwhile, I'm sticking with my MP3 CD player that gets 50+ hours on a pair of rechargable AAs.
My other criteria are large (40GB+) hard drive and FLAC/Musepack/Vorbis playback, and any rockbox-supported players will handle those easily.