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Posted on 08/21/2006 6:42:07 PM PDT by martin_fierro
SanDisk Targets iPod With 8GB Music Player
The Sansa e280 has a $249.99 price tag and is positioned to take on the red hot iPod Nano.
By W. David Gardner TechWeb
Aug 21, 2006 01:14 PM
Leveraging its flash memory manufacturing capability, SanDisk Corp. announced Monday a new 8-gigabyte music player and price cuts for its e200 Sansa product line.
The 8-gigabyte Sansa e280 carries a $249.99 price and is positioned against Apple Computer's best selling iPod Nano. The new Sansa has an optional SanDisk 2GB microSD card, which enables music to be swapped from the Sansa to mobile phones equipped with microSD card slots.
"The most costly ingredient in a flash-based MP3 player is the flash memory," said Eric Bone, director of audio/video product marketing at SanDisk, in a statement. "Since we make the flash memory, we essentially remove the middleman and pass that savings directly to the consumer."
SanDisk has been gaining market share in the MP3 music player space in the past year, jumping from a 3.1 percent share to nearly 10 percent in the most recent second quarter. Apple remains in a solid lead in the category with slightly more than 75 percent market share, according to rankings by NPD Group Inc.
While SanDisk can boast of an advantage due to its flash memory manufacturing capability, Apple's strength is largely based on its ties to its iTunes software and its music store. SanDisk is countering with its open digital rights management system that enables users to purchase music from numerous sources.
For instance, Sansa e200 players operate with Microsoft PlaysForSure and with music stores like Rhapsody To Go.
SanDisk said it was lowering pricing on its entire Sansa line. The Sansa e270 6GB player is offered at a new price of $219.99 while the Sansa e250 2GB player is priced at $139.99. SanDisk is also planning to introduce a player for less than $100 before the holiday season, according to press reports.
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That should cut the cost of production! And just about everyone has a thumb or two. One gig is only 35-40 $$ Two gig is not far behind that!
Genius move on their part, unlike the ipod, the play button is on top and now the menu botton is now on the bottom. This is nothing like an ipod.
Oh, it's clearly an iPod rip off, but hopefully, this will help push the cost of the players down, so it's not a bad thing. I use sandisk compact flash cards and like them a lot.
Hey, worked for Windows 95 :)
I like the new Sansa player, mostly because at 8 GB flash memory storage you can hold quite a lot of music on the player along with the podcasts you can load and erase off the player on a regular basis.
It sure is a nice looking player, but the major problem for SanDisk, Microsoft, Creative, or anyone else who seriously wants to take on Apple and the iPod is the issue of iTunes. As has been noted many times here and elsewhere, a lot of people now have a lot of money invested in iTunes songs with Apple's proprietary codec. Very few people are going to surrender that big investment and switch players. And, it will only get worse when movies are downloaded through iTunes. Someone needs to figure this out!
I like my creative labs Zen Photo Micro.
Done. Hymn.
And when one has weened oneself from iTunes dependency, one can go to All of MP3.com for pennies per song...legally.
I have two Zen players. A 40 Gb Zen Xtra and a 5 Gb Zen Micro.
Coupled with the Notmad Explorer from RedChair...I couldn't be happier with an MP3 player.
iPod.? What's an iPod?
IPOD------Overpriced, Overhyped product
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