Digi Music

Can anyone beat Apple in the iPod industry? This year sees number of iPods coming to the market and in a few years time we can see the market hold of Apple shrinking in the digital portable music industry but it looks impossible that some other company will take the lead from Apple iPod. Here are some of the leading iPods available in the market which has only one mission to kill iPods and take a bite in the Apples market share. But seriously, is there really a player out there to challenge the iPod? Lets see a few of them The first on the list is Creative Zen V Plus 8GB: The Zen v has a 1.5 inch display and one of the largest capacity flash players. It has a standard FM tuner , voice recorder, in-line connection and supports playforsure. Its the oldest surviving brand and the new Zen will be available in the market late fall at a price of $279 slightly more than iPod and Zune. Second we have to go for Microsoft’s Zune: The most interesting thing about Zune is the commitment of Microsoft to spend tons of its money on its advertisement. Zune has got nothing special in it in terms of features and all its features are already in the market on other Dap players. Well Zune has Wi-Fi, an FM tuner support for a number of codes including H.264, MP3, WMA, WMV, MPEG4, .JPG and AAC. The feature which will stand out in all this file jargon is Zune-to-Zune that will allow users to use Wi-Fi to share audio and photo images (no video) with other owners. Will it be enough only time will tell and this player will hit the markets on November 17th . The third player that I am going to discuss is SanDisk Sansa e280 8GB: The Sansa e280 is the first 8GB flash unit and even though Apple matched it recently with the 8GB nano, you will see more from SanDisk in the coming months. The major advantage of the e280 is the cutting of the middleman which means relatively low price than the Apple. The e280 is already about $30 less than the nano. NPD Group claims that SanDisk already has 10% of the market, but NPD’s research is suspect. Still, SanDisk is one of the leaders in the market and a player to watch. The fourth player to watch out for is Creative Zen Neeon 2: The Zen Neeon 2 comes in 1GB ($125), 2GB ($170), and 4GB ($190) flavors, a small color display and a footprint roughly the same as the iPod nano. The Neeon 2 also offers the FM Tuner, audio-in record and voice recorder most iPod competitors offer. As is the case, Creative usually excellent players are often the better buy over the iPod line unless you have been building that collection of iTunes tracks. The fifth player that I am going to discuss is LG MFFM20: Not for its over the top features but more for the visual appeal and for the efforts of LG to create some different shape from the market trend. Outside of its shape the LG MFFM20 is a fairly basic player. The unit comes in 1GB and 512MB capacities so figure a sub $125 unit. The player offers an FM tuner and PlaysforSure DRM support, the latter which may eventually become the stepchild of Microsoft’s upcoming Zune rights management scheme. There is an OLED screen and a promise of 20 hours battery life.