RSSRio Exits MP3 Player Business
By Ed Oswald | Published August 26, 2005, 12:43 PM
Facing increasing market pressure, D&M Holdings, the company that owns the Rio digital music player brand, announced that it would be exiting the market at the end of September.
D&M will continue to hold the rights to the Rio brand name and could re-enter the market as it still has access to the MP3 technology it sold in July to SigmaTel.
As with many companies attempting to compete with Apple's ubiquitous iPod, Rio found it difficult to stay competitive without spending a good deal of capital. Creative has found similar roadblocks; earlier this month it reported a much wider loss than expected due to pressures from Apple.
The announcement follows only a few months after Rio certified its Carbon and Ce2100 devices for Microsoft's PlaysForSure technology. The company will instead focus on what it calls its core businesses - premium audio and video and advanced content server products.
"The digital audio market is evolving in such a way that our competitive advantage will be to focus on creating premium home network products that are designed for compatibility with a variety of client devices and services," said Vic Pacor, president of D&M Holdings.
The company will continue to support all Rio players through its warranty, service repair, and customer service channels.
D&M also said on Friday in conjunction with the Rio announcement that its purchase of AV company Boston Acoustics was imminent and "right in line with our premium-focused strategy."
I can't comment much on Rio's other products, but the first HD based mp3 i ever owned was the Rio Nitrus.
It had only 1.5gb, but with a rechargable battery and excellent sound quality, it was quite a nice player.
The only problem i had with it, was the slow switching speeds between songs and the battery.
The battery only lasted 8 hours in reality, compared to the 12 hours stated, and after 1 year, i was lucky to get 20 minutes out of it.
Since it was a built in battery, i was screwed.
Tried e-mailing rio, but never got a response.
For the last 6 months, i've been enjoying my Creative Zen Micro which features a removable battery, the battery life has stayed constant and the speeds of the player are perfect.
And with a replaceable lion battery, i expect to be enjoying this 5GB beauty for the next couple of years!
Up with removeable batteries, and down with in-built.
It's 2005, it's time mp3 players took a new step forward.
Score: 0
|Rio made excellent mp3 players. I loved the sleek design of the Rio Forge. Well, time to move onto iRiver.
Score: 0
|Darn! I love Rio :( I have a Nitrus.. and I just love it :( Oh well.. I suppose its time to move on. Creative is coming out with some awesome players.. I might want to get one of those. They are overpriced though.
Score: 0
|The iPod costs more than Zen players. Not to mention Creative is also losing the battle, they lost a ton of sales / money recently, the article was posted here at BetaNews.
Creative will die out of the MP3 market as well.
Score: 0
|Damn!!!
Rio Karma was one of the fewest players that had support for FLAC lossless format.
Having the best audio quality possible was nice.
R.I.P Rio. :(
Score: 0
|Like I said below, FLAC playback only supported up to a -2 level compression.
I encoded my FLAC files in -8, the best there is, and the Rio Karma spat it back at me.
Score: 0
|Argh! The Rio Karma was a great little device. Ethernet syncing for any OS, FLAC and Ogg playback, a good-sized microdrive, and an active community.
Score: 0
|FLAC playback only supported up to a -2 level compression.
Score: 0
|Thank goodness I got a Zen.
Score: 0
|The Zen's are dying out too.
Score: 0
|Now PlayForSure has became PrayForSure
Score: 0
|Good riddance!
Score: 0
|I saw this one coming... Rio cut their own throat years ago by pissing off so many of their loyal customers with their crappy drivers and horrible customer service.
I still hate them for abandoning my sweet little Rio 500. That was my first MP3 player and I still use it at the gym -- it's so nice and tiny.
Score: 0
|