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Gigabeat music players don’t seem to sell well outside of Japan, so you have to credit Toshiba for not giving up…they’ve just announced the new U series in their gigabeat family of media players. The high-end model gigabeat U201 music player has 2GB of flash memory, sizes to 76.5×36.2×10.9 mm & 36 grams, a 96×96 OLED display, FM radio/recorder etc. That makes the U about 29% physically larger than the iPod nano, but a bit lighter. 20 hr battery life.

The lead-off, and presumably best, feature of the U series is the 1-bit DAC which is supposed to enhance sound quality via noise reduction…although no SNR figures are provided. Better, but no cigar. Approximately $142 for the U201 in Japan.

Digital audio player “gigabeat selling the U series” – Toshiba press release, March 19 2007

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Whereas many have joined the iPod music-player wars, none have succeeded…so far. And so, from the fog of war, a new contender appears, viz, Slacker Inc who hopes to kill the iPod via death from the sky.

The to-be-available Slacker Portable Player will pose a triple threat to the iPod/iTunes duopoly through delivery of personalized music content not only via been-there-done-that streaming Internet, but also by WiFi and satellite. 4inch screen 120- GB

Could satellite technology help to topple the iPod? – The Times, March 15 2007     

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In a bit of old news, the Apple iPod shuffle is now also available in blue, pink, green and, the apparent favorite, orange. Same specs, different metaphysics. 

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iriver (yes, the company name is all lower case now) introduced their new Clix2 digital audio player at CES 2007 last month, and plans to start selling it in a couple of months. The Clix2 replaces the well-regarded, but not so well-selling Clix, and improves on the older model in a number of ways…

The display for the Clix2 remains at 2.2 inches and with a QVGA resolution but is now AMOLED instead of LCD…which makes for a nice/vivid display at 100% NTSC. Video frame rate has been doubled to 30 fps and max storage capacity has been jacked to 8GB from 4.

The Clix is/was CNet’s top-rated MP3 player, and the Clix2 might well improve on that, but still not go anywhere…shame really.     

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Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun got to spend about 45 minutes using the new Apple iPhone and reports back that that he really, really liked it. His review has several superlatives and many positive comments such as “perfect”, “simplest phone” and “most beautiful display”.

He confirms some details, such as 3rd party apps will not be allowed on the iPhone, and provides a bit of new info such as the device will run a sub-set of Leopard, Apple’s new OS.

There seems to be somewhat of a social epidemic of positive comments about the device going around at the moment, and just in time to prevent the iPhone from slipping into hubris, we thankfully find some nemesis comments courtesy of Steve Ballmer…in an interview with Information Week, Mr Ballmer was kind enough to share his opinions of the iPhone with us, viz: “Many other vendors are doing similar things for less” and to remind us of the phone’s high price tag and its lack of a keyboard.    

You could call iPhone perfect - Chicago Sun-Times, Jan 18 2007  

Posted in Music Players, Phones ~ 1 Comment

Thx to the Commonwealth Bank in Australia we now have a good idea of the cost of the iPod nano 2G in various countries, normalized to US$.

The nano seems to be most expensive in Brazil by far, and cheapest in Canada.

The reasons put forth for the differences include duties & tarrifs, shipping costs as well as Apple Inc’s pricing policies.

Sadly, there do not seem to be any arbitrage opps here.

Apple’s iPod takes on global currency markets – Reuters, Jan 18 2007

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CNet staged another Prizefight recently – this time challenger Zune when up against the current MP3 champion the iPod. At stake the title ‘World’s Best MP3 Player’. CNet’s Veronica Belmont played referee in a 5-rounder. 

The contestants were evaluated on the basis of their design, interface, compatibility, features and performance. The Zune won the interface round, but lost out to the iPod in the areas of compatibility and features. 

The final score from CNet: iPod squeaks past Zune by a score of 20:19. This verdict is similar to, but somewhat less generous than the 18:14 margin assigned by the London Times in their recent article “Test Bench special: Zune v iPod“.    

Prizefight: Apple iPod vs Microsoft Zune – CNet TV, Dec 14, 2006

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Today’s Wall Street Journal reports on the convergence between cell phones and digital music players and the expected impact (not good) on the Apple iPod.

By way of example they note that Nokia expects to sell 80 million music phones in 2006 alone and pointedly remark that Apple has only sold a grand total of 60 million iPods since inception. Nokia can with some justification therefore claim to be the world’s biggest maker of music players. The article does hold out a ray of hope for the iPod by noting that only about one half of music capable phones are actually used to play music. Apple is of course fighting back mostly by means of the as-yet unannounced iPhone.

The question is, one supposes, does convenience trump cool? …the tone of the article suggests yes.

Wake-up Call for the iPod – Wall Street Journal, Nov 30, 2006

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Device convergence might be finished. From a manufacturer’s viewpoint, adding more and more features to a given platform makes economic sense – hence we see things like hyper-converged cell phones that have a built-in camera, GPS, TV, a music player, a glucometer, a toaster, can play games, and can manage your office documents. Apple seems to have resisted the trend, but yielded a while back by adding video capability to the iPod.

There are indications, however, that end users of such all-in-one, kitchen-sink devices are mostly indifferent to these fancy features and prefer simpler devices instead. Hollywood Reporter is reporting that a mere 2.2% of owners of video-capable iPods have actually played videos on their devices and spend most of their time just listening to music. And an earlier similar study in Information Week, entitled Users Don’t Really Want Device Convergence, says the same thing about the assimilation of the PDA into the cell phone…only about 10% of users use the PDA functions built into their phones.

What does this all mean? …in general, we lean towards the Jack of all Trades explanation. In the case of the video iPod, we like what Michael Bull had to say in The Meaning of iPod, which posits that users just want a respite from the intrusiveness of the external world. And finally, who really wants to watch video on such a small screen (see pic attached) ?

Study: iPod video yet to play big – Hollywood Reporter, Nov 20, 2006

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In a surprisingly positive review, ExtremeTech had a look at the new Zune MP3 player and seemed to like almost all of the core features of the product. They complimented the look and feel of the Zune’s soft finish, the large(r) screen, better sound quality (as compared to the iPod), the layout and navigation of the controls, the FM radio and the picture viewer. Some negatives include lack of support for podcasts, no TV or movies and doesn’t work on Vista. They call it an “almost great product”

The review was so flattering to the Zune in fact, that it was surprising to see ExtremeTech give it a lowish rating of 7/10.

A marginally more negative take on the Zune can be found in Ars Technica at Welcome to the social. While Ars Technica did have some trouble with the Zune’s software (it crashed), they liked many of the same things that ExtremeTech did, including the appearance, the screen, user interface and the sound quality.

And continuing on to the other end of the spectrum, we find the sharply-worded “Avoid the loony Zune ” in the Chicago Sun-Times…it’s quite negative as the title suggests.

Suffice it to say that reviews are decidedly mixed. Hmm..it’s either time to short AAPL on strength, or buy on weakness.

Zune: iPod Killer or Half-Baked Flop? – ExtremeTech, November 20, 2006 

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