Could this be the iPod killer?

[KiwiCoromandel]

SanDisk Corp has introduced a new digital music player that stores twice as many songs as the popular iPod Nano for nearly the same price and cut the cost of existing models ahead of the holiday shopping season.

SanDisk, which is a distant second to Apple in the digital music player market, said it would sell a model of its Sansa player with 8 gigabytes of storage capacity enabling it to save up to 2000 songs.

The new player will retail at just under $US250, SanDisk said. By comparison, a new 4-gigabyte Nano is priced at about $US249.

Prices for Sansa players with 2, 4 and 6 gigabytes of storage were cut by as much as 30 per cent to a range of about $US140 to $US220.

"The most costly ingredient in a flash-based (music) player is the flash memory," said Eric Bone, director of audio/video product marketing at SanDisk. "Since we make the flash memory, we essentially remove the middleman and pass that savings directly to the consumer."

California-based SanDisk is the world's top supplier of flash memory data storage cards and has set its sights on raising its share of the digital music player market to about 30 per cent to 35 per cent from about 10 per cent.

Demand for flash memory chips is expanding rapidly as their ability to retain data after power is shut off make them an ideal storage device for portable electronics.

SanDisk is in the midst of expanding production, announcing earlier this month plans with Toshiba to spend nearly $US5 billion building a new flash memory plant in Japan. The company has also agreed to buy memory card developer Msystems for $US1.55 billion.

Apple reached agreements last year for a long-term supply of flash memory with Toshiba, Intel, Hynix Semiconductor, Micron Technology and Samsung Electronics.

source:Reuters

image:AP:SanDisk's new Sansa MP3 player...new ipod killer?

[method77]

I'm sick of hearing the phrase "iPod killer". There are at least 100 similar and better players out there but iPod was first there. Very difficult to lose the market share although it will slowly happen as long as the others keep making them like they do now.