News
Mix: Dell, Austin City Limits, Napster & Yahoo, Steve Jobs
In its latest move to take on the iPod, Dell plans to unveil three new Dell DJ music players, including a tiny, flash memory-based model with LCD screen and an FM radio receiver called the Dell DJ Ditty. The company also plans to add color screens and XM Satellite Radio to its Pocket DJ and Dell DJ models.
CitizenPod has released its free 2005 Austin City Limits Music Festival clickguide, which puts the entire ACL Music Festival lineup, performance schedule, band bios and festival information on your iPod.
Napster and Yahoo! are battling it out for second place in the digital music industry. The iTunes Music Store continues to dominate with a market share of about 82%, leaving Napster, Yahoo!, Microsoft and RealNetworks to fight for the remainder of the pie.
The Economist has an interesting piece on Apple CEO Steve Jobs: “In short, Mr Jobs currently seems vivacious by anybody’s standards. There are even rumors that he might run for governor of California (as a Democrat, presumably; Al Gore is on Apple’s board). For somebody famous in large part for a spectacular defeat—to Bill Gates and Microsoft—all this must feel like a new lease of life, in every respect.”
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1
“DJ Ditty”?? Ugh…. It could be the greatest DAP in the history of the world and I wouldn’t buy it with that name!
I suppose in 6 months they’ll shorten it to just “Ditty”, as the “DJ” part will be getting between it and its fans…
Posted by Fangorn in Texas on September 16, 2005 at 10:36 AM (PDT)
2
hahaha DJ Ditty, wow that has to be the worst name for a DAP I’ve ever heard.
Posted by matrixsjd on September 16, 2005 at 12:54 PM (PDT)
3
The Dell Ditty sounds better than DJ Ditty. Dell is hanging onto the “DJ” moniker even though it’s not really worth anything…never really caught on in terms of branding.
An even bigger mistake for Dell is that they tried to compete with the Shuffle by coming out with a 512mb flash player with an LCD display, but didn’t account for the fact that by the time they came to market with their iPod killer…Apple was onto a 4gb flash model with a full-color display.
Come on guys…get with it…knock Apple of its pedestal.
Posted by Talking Madness in Los Angeles on September 16, 2005 at 11:06 PM (PDT)
4
Apple was onto a 4gb flash model with a full-color display
Yes, but the Apple 4GB is nearly three the price of the Dell flash player.
They are two different markets. At the low end, even $50 difference is worlds apart.
I just did an analysis of the Nano on a parts basis and I see that, basically, it enables Apple to enhance the margins for the mid-range offering versus the mini - basically Apple was getting screwed by the hard disk cost. Because you can lock in RAM from multiple sources and adjust it on the spot market, it enables much better pricing. Apple’s margins on the nano will continue to improve much faster than they would have on a mini.
So finally I see why the mini was dropped in favor of the nano. However, it’s a bit of a gamble, because for consumers the mini offered larger capacity storage for the same price, and we could easily have seen an 8GB mini by year’s end based on hard drive bumps. An 8GB flash player remains quite a bit more expensive, and just as bulky. However, Samsung just released 32GBit chips, so it’ll be easy to mount them in a flat compact array this time next year…
Then again, if people don;t jump at the 4GB Nano price, Apple could easily discontinue it in favor of the 2GB, drop the price a bit to create some room, and launch an 8GB mini based on the newest Seagate 1”.
Posted by Demosthenes on September 17, 2005 at 12:47 PM (PDT)
5
Demosthenes-
Good analysis, but ultimately I believe there will be only two markets…
1) Lower priced, decent capacity flash memory players…
2) Higher priced, super high capacity hard drive players…
In essence Nanos and 60gb+ iPods. No sense in mid-range price/capacity players with delicate micro drives in them.
Posted by Talking Madness in Los Angeles on September 17, 2005 at 11:10 PM (PDT)
6
Nanos and 60gb+ iPods. No sense in mid-range price/capacity players
I thought the mini was a dud when it came out, but I was proved wrong. The “average” space used per iPod is still only around 7GB, and that’s including all the higher capacity players.
I can’t see Apple getting a nano product (color LCD/OLED, lots of SRAM, interfaces) much below $150 for a long time. There’s a lot of room in the sub $100 market.
Posted by Demosthenes on September 18, 2005 at 4:39 PM (PDT)
7
I loved the mini and bought one right when it came out. It’s being replaced by the nano because the nano is essentially the same player without the moving parts and significantly smaller.
The physical size of the nano and it’s capacity will increase slightly as time goes on, but there’s not room for a player between it and the full-size iPods. The size will increase because I believe people will ultimately feel it’s a bit too small. Cute at first, but too small in reality if you consider that a slightly larger form factor would allow for a greatly increased battery capacity and more features in the future.
The Shuffle should drop in price down to $59/$79 (512mb/1gb) to remain a hit. It’s a no brainer to fork over a bit of extra money and go from a 1gb Shuffle up to a 2gb nano. And the fact they can sell the much superior nano for $199 makes me believe Apple can sell the Shuffle (a player with 1/4 the capacity and no screen) for $59/$79.
So I guess I should revise my market overview to include…
3) Ultra-low priced, 50 song flash players like the Shuffle.
Posted by Talking Madness in Los Angeles on September 19, 2005 at 1:32 AM (PDT)