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Yahoo, SanDisk Team Up Against iPod

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

April 9, 2007, 1:35 PM

Yahoo is joining the ranks of Microsoft and others in attempting to unseat Apple's venerable iPod by teaming with SanDisk on a new Wi-Fi enabled Sansa MP3 player. The device will retail for $250, and includes a 2.2-inch color LCD screen and a capacity of 4GB.

Although it's not the first portable music player to boast Wi-Fi connectivity, Yahoo and SanDisk are making the feature more useful. Unlike the Microsoft Zune, the Sansa Connect would be able to directly download songs from the Internet and stream Internet radio.

The connectivity software that powers the Sansa Connect's key features was developed by Zing, a Mountain View, Calif. start-up co-founded by Tim Bucher, a former Apple executive who played a key part in the iPod's development.

"My sixteen year-old daughter has a Zune, goes to a high school with 3700 kids, and has never once encountered another person with a Zune, shared music, or even used the Wifi functionality on the device," Yahoo! Music's Ian Rogers wrote Monday.

"Welcome to the social? It's 2007," he mused. "How about welcome to the Internet. Duh."

Sansa ConnectIn addition to the downloading of songs, a Sansa Connect user would be able to view their photos online from Flickr, and share music with users of Yahoo! Messenger even if they don't own the device.

While sources insist that the Zune will eventually sport similar features, they have not yet appeared. However, in an increasingly competitive market, new entrants must define themselves quickly or risk being lost in the crowd.

Of any of the MP3 player manufacturers, SanDisk has shown the most promise in competing with the iPod. Its players are #2 to Apple with about a nine percent market share. Apple currently holds a 73.7 percent market share, according to February data from NPD Group.

Yahoo will offer a subscription service for the Sansa Connect player for $11.99 USD per month, which would allow users to download unlimited songs from the Yahoo! Music Unlimited catalog.

Analyst reaction to the player seems mixed. Internet pundit Om Mailk called the player a "marriage of convenience."

"Zing, despite the buzz hasn't exactly proved to be David Wright of Consumer Electronics," he wrote for GigaOm. "And Yahoo, well their music efforts have come in fits-and-starts. The only winner in this deal is SanDisk - it manages to sell flash memory at premium prices instead of being stuck with commodity pricing."

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By shy_one

posted Apr 10, 2007 - 1:51 PM

You want to take market share away from apple it's very simple don't include things like wifi kids don't give a dam about that include a cheap camera/camcorder(like those in cell phones)and the kids will want it as long as the picture and video quality is atleast decent.

Think i'm wrong just look at all the picture and video sites out there the kids love them.

Advertise the ability to pictures/videos to upload to their favorite sites ontop of music/video play back =instant cool factor.

Score: 0

By templar™

posted Apr 10, 2007 - 2:32 PM

"You want to take market share away from apple it's very simple"

Wow!

Score: 0

By DotNet_Coder

posted Apr 10, 2007 - 1:36 PM

I stick to my MotoQ with the 2GB SD card and my EVDO connection along with Orb to stream music anywhere... ;-)

I have to admit, this is one area that I can see mobile phone carriers really walking away with the market share if they would get with the program and really design a phone that is as easy as the iPod (oh wait, the iPhone...).

Oh, and as everyone else said... $250.00 for 4GB + an additional $11.95 a month for this?! Who the hell is Yahoo trying to convince with that pricing structure??? There is no way I would purchase this device for my children AND have a monthly service fee on top of it.

Score: 0

By TemporalBeing

posted Apr 10, 2007 - 1:20 PM

"The device will retail for $250, and includes a 2.2-inch color LCD screen and a capacity of 4GB."

How is that competing with Apple? For a similar price you can get 7 to 10 times the storage space from Apple? (http://www.apple.com/hardware/)

Score: 0

By foxfyre

posted Apr 10, 2007 - 12:48 PM

Gee, and they didn't even tell us what colors it is available in!

Yawn...

Score: 0

By Caleb

posted Apr 10, 2007 - 11:28 AM

250$ for 4GB?

iPod nano 4GB: 200$

iPod video 30GB: 250$

Score: 0

By templar™

posted Apr 10, 2007 - 2:33 PM

Yeah, the price isn't right.

But you shouldnt compare harddrive-based with flash-based players.

Score: 0

By ogman

posted Apr 10, 2007 - 11:27 AM

I tried Yahoo? Music...twice. Canceled both times. The product does not work well, is often painfully slow (and cuts out), and the support sucks.

These threads are always amusing, with the visceral "anything but iPod" folks out in full force. They sound a whole lot like the same people who rail against the ABMers.

Score: 0

By mjm01010101

posted Apr 11, 2007 - 12:05 AM

There is (albeit small) group of people that just-don't-like apple.... for whatever reason. I'm one of them. I find their advertising grating and simplistic and abhor the rdf. I hate quicktime/itunes and find it to be bloat.

I'd rather have nothing than an ipod, and that is proven. I won an ipod and gave it away.

Score: 0

By uberfly

posted Apr 10, 2007 - 1:25 AM

I have a 4g Sansa that I use with Rhapsody to Go. It's a damn nice little player. Anything but an ipod i say.

Score: 0

By imafurby

posted Apr 9, 2007 - 9:15 PM

"My sixteen year-old daughter has a Zune, goes to a high school with 3700 kids, and has never once encountered another person with a Zune,"

Says a lot about power of marketing and the lock-step rigidity of people's taste.

Score: 0

By ubuntuclient

posted Apr 9, 2007 - 9:31 PM

That's great. Have a cool device that no one have.

How do you feel when you put on a $100 tee and everyone else is also wearing one.

Score: 0

By shicaca

edited Apr 9, 2007 - 9:06 PM

Pretty much this has been said numerous times, but honestly this is the reason I looked at the Sansa and instantly clicked away from it when I bought my creative zen vision:M. 4gb? $250?! You've gotta be freaking kidding me! 4gb =! adequate storage, no questions asked. There are few techies that will buy this just because of sheer size. It would be nice to have a smaller player, but at the cost of size and for that PRICE?! No way.

Ridiculous.

*NEXT!*

Score: 0

By kashin

edited Apr 9, 2007 - 6:45 PM

Nothing good can come out of something that Yahoo touches. I bet it will have their crappy Yahoo toolbar or something similar installed. SanDisk is okay, but I hate Yahoo. They have no chance against Apple anyway.

"Yahoo will offer a subscription service for the Sansa Connect player for $11.99 USD per month, would allow users to download unlimited songs from the Yahoo! Music Unlimited catalog."

Surprise, surprise! Yet ANOTHER trick from Yahoo to try and cash in on something stupid and useless. Fail.

Score: 0

By philosopher_dog

posted Apr 9, 2007 - 6:34 PM

I wouldn't buy it. 4G? Too small. The wi-fi plan sounds cool. I'd like to be able to stream internet radio. But this is just more proprietary nonsense. I refuse to buy any DRM tracks. Period.

Score: 0

By ogman

posted Apr 10, 2007 - 11:16 AM

You da man! Seriously.

Score: 0

By Program86

posted Apr 9, 2007 - 4:33 PM

Subscription service? WTF?
Especially since iTunes is going to be selling DRM FREE tracks very soon...
iPod immitators = been there, done that
4GB for $250? ...ummm that more expensive than an iPod...
Its already confirmed that the 6th Gen iPod is going to have WiFi...
Your going to need the hand of God himself to convince people to buy this over an iPod.

Score: 0

By Hellcat_M

posted Apr 9, 2007 - 3:03 PM

I like the look and the idea of being able to steam and download music, but 4mb is just not enough. If it were going to be cheaper I would buy it just for the steaming of internet music, but for $250 I'll wait till something less expensive comes out. If I were SanDisk I would have made the 4gb version but also one with a flash card reader, and one with 4 flash card readers so you can just add up to 4 flash cards if you like and and have 20gb of music (4 onboard and then 4, 4gb flash cards and as memory cards go up you an add more. Yes this would be expensive to buy, BUT as we have seen in the past people like their toys.

Score: 0

By cap737

posted Apr 9, 2007 - 6:01 PM

I agree, the concept seemse to be more promising than the zune. I think they are going in the right direction with using the wifi to download songs and listen to internet radio but the the price is not worth the 4gb storage.

As for the monthly subscription, hopefully that would be good for both the player and the computer. Keep it up, sandisk!

Score: 0

By skimore

posted Apr 9, 2007 - 6:21 PM

buy a video watch for 60$ with 2G..
or one of the other iPod clones.. we are being flooded with stuff these days.. why pay over 100$ for anything under 4G???

http://mp3nmp4.com/

Score: 0

By frankwick

posted Apr 9, 2007 - 3:02 PM

Looks cool - kinda like a mini gps. I don't think Sansa can pull it off no matter how great the product is. Sansa has its small group of fans, but when your average 14 year old can select among a Sansa or an McIpod, the Apple win everytime based on name.

Score: 0

By Banquo

edited Apr 9, 2007 - 2:51 PM

The only way to unseat ipod is to come up with an even more obnoxious marketing campaign and a new product that is more hip and trendy than an iPod. Apple is really the only company that can pull that off though, because Apple is cool and all the other companies are corporate swine. That's one of the reasons the Zune is doing so poorly, it's not cool to own Microsoft products.

Intelligent consumers who do their research will buy the best players based on actual features and cost. All the little "look at me" trend followers will buy iPods.

Score: 0

By kashin

posted Apr 9, 2007 - 6:54 PM

"because Apple is cool and all the other companies are corporate swine."

That's the funniest line out of all the comments here. I seriously stopped and laughed before replying. You want to talk about corporate swine? How about the fact that Apple posted $1 billion profit on $2 billion revenues last year? What this means is, they're charging you double what it costs Apple to make their products. Posting record profits is great and all, but it also shows you how stupid people are. They're willing to pay a high price for something, just because it's trendy and "cool" as you put it.

PS. - Am I the only one who is utterly annoyed by the seizure inducing jumping shadows in those iPod commercials, and the ridiculous Mac vs. PC viral marketing idiocy?

Score: 0

By Banquo

edited Apr 9, 2007 - 8:40 PM

You may want to go look up the word sarcasm. I don't think Apple is trendy or cool.

Score: 0

By lonechicken

posted Apr 9, 2007 - 2:14 PM

The way to "unseat" iPods is not to have 20 different companies trying 20 different ways to do it. Max two or three super-coalitions coming up with two or three players is the only way. Of course that probably would stifle variety and choices.

Just remember back to the brief time when NVidia was dominant in video cards. 5 or 6 different competitors wasn't going to unseat them. It took all others to become irrelevant and only ATI as the one major competitor in order to balance the market.

Score: 0

By Sexbarril

posted Apr 10, 2007 - 1:44 AM

Leaving the market with only two choices.

If either fell ( ATI did ) then choice is no more.

As it is now, you have choice of many products, all different, and each worth a different persons money.

If consolidation happens, less product choice, market gets stifled, not balanced as you put it.

Basically competition is good, even if 1 product is dominant.

Latz, SB

Score: 0

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