I different kind of market -- I was waiting for a subway a year ago and saw a high school kid drop his CD player. Basically it seemed to crack the door. The kid unhooked the speakers, took out the batteries and CD, then threw the thing away. A week later I saw CD players for twenty-something bucks. Disposable electronics.
Do you have any doubts we'll see a Chinese version of the iPod Shuffle for $24.95 within a year?
A MP3 player and a CD player are fundamentaly different things.
The CD player contains no internal data. The media is physically separate from the device.
The MP3 player requires internal storage. There is going to be a lower limit to the price of such an item.
Simply "economy of scale." I work on computers for a living. I remember the days when a floppy disk drive sold for well over $100. Back then, if the floppy drive stopped working, you would get out some test equipment and alignment disk, and realign the heads. Or if there was a problem with the system, you'd start testing individual components. You can't do that now: Surface mount devices are nearly impossible to replace. Today, you simply try a new drive or board. If it fixes the problem, you dispose of the old one. It's not that the quality is lower (although in some cases it is), it's just that the more you make, they cheaper they become. It's typical in electronics. Look at VCRs and DVD players as well.
Mark
As soon as I saw the Ipod, I said to myself, "You Apple people better invest well, and you better have something else up your sleeve, because the clones will be here by Christmas."
I started seeing them in August. I still haven't bought one based on my experiences with being addicted to PDA's.
Shame on MS, by the way, for squandering some pretty serious opportunities.
I want my music to reside on my computer, with other documents, directions to various places I want to go, shopping lists, etc.
When I pull my car in the garage, the car passes information about itself (brake wear, gas milege, time to next oil change, etc.). I want the computer to pass any recently posted recall data to the car, and service advisories, etc.
I want to go in to my office, change up the music mix, download the days working docs, shopping lists, etc. then walk out of the office.
I want to wake up, start the car, have all that stuff downloaded to my car and enjoy the new music, news, directions, traffic advisories, construction slowdowns etc. that are now in my car's computer.
When I get to work, I want to pull out the thumb drive from the dash of my car and go into my office, where I plug it into my Bose Wave radio where it will play my music.
Everything I'm talking about is basic, basic tech today. The fact I can't buy a car with something like that is idiotic.