Tuesday, March 8, 2005
Sony unveils nine new, lightweight, trendy flash memory players to compete with Apple Computer Inc.'s slim new iPod Shuffle.
The new Sony players also support the generic MP3 audio format. Industry analysts seemed impressed by Sony's latest move.
"It's like the empire strikes back," said Richard Doherty of The Envisioneering Group. "Sony has taken a lot of quiet and loud criticism and has turned it into a brilliant line of players."
The lineup includes a set of cigarette lighter-sized models, a bit more expensive than the iPod Shuffle but with a much longer advertised battery life, 50 hours of playback time with a rechargeable battery compared to Apple's 12 hours.
And unlike the Shuffle, the Sony players have bright, 3-line screens to display song information.
A 512-megabyte model costs $130 and a 1-gigabyte model costs $180. Models with an FM tuner each cost $20 more. By comparison, Apple's shuffle is priced at $99 for 512 MB and $149 for 1 GB. The models will be available in May.
A second set of players, set to ship later this month, are roundish, with a diameter slightly larger than a poker chip. They run on AAA batteries, which Sony says will give the user 70 hours of playback time on a single battery. The prices range from $90 for 256 MB of memory to $150 for 1 GB of memory.
A third design is water-resistant, costing $130 for 256 MB of memory.
By: DocMemory
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