Dell exits the hard-drive mp3 player business

Yet another victim of almighty Apple, Dell has recently announced that it will discontinue making its “Dell DJ” hard-drive based mp3 players. Dell will not, however, discontinue its flash-based players. Dell’s announcement follows a slew of other such announcements from other players in the mp3-player industry. The wild success of Apple’s iPods has blown the majority of its competitors out of the water. There are only a few of them left in the industry: notably Sony and Creative.

What is the key to the iPod’s success? For a very long time, Apple had a sort of iconoclastic appeal to a small cult-like group of geeks, but it never won out on the mass market. Why was the iPod so different? Only two answers are readily available: the iPod’s comparitively immense storage, and its fashion appeal. I think the second answer is far more important.

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Published:
February 6, 2006 / 7:37 pm
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apple, dell, technology
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