Apple to SanDisk: Yeah, that “9 percent market share against dominant competitor” situation sucks, doesn’t it?
It’s daunting enough to launch yet another competing music player against Apple’s iPod juggernaut. But in debuting their novel, Wi-Fi enabled player and music store combo today, SanDisk and Yahoo had the challenge shoved in their faces, waking to Cupertino crowing about iPod unit sales topping the 100 million mark.
Into that headwind comes the SanDisk Sansa Connect, a 4GB music player with a microSD card slot for additional capacity, a 2.2-inch color screen and the distinguishing ability to hook up to Yahoo’s music, radio, messaging and Flickr photo-sharing services via the Wi-Fi connection of your home network or a public hotspot. Among the major competitors, only Microsoft’s Zune has Wi-Fi capability, but right now it’s limited to Zune-to-Zune communication. The Sansa Connect will list for $250, and you should figure in $12 a month for Yahoo’s Music Unlimited service to keep it full.
The software that connects the player to Yahoo’s services comes from Zing, co-founded by Tim Bucher, a former Apple exec who oversaw development of key pieces of the iPod. “If we can make it seamless enough where you don’t have to be an IT professional, you can tap into those newbies,” he told the Wall Street Journal. Analysts are understandably reluctant to bet against Apple. “I don’t think that anybody is likely to be able to steal share from Apple based on some kind of hardware feature,” says Stephen Baker, an analyst at NPD Group.
And then there are those numbers on the iPodometer. The 100 million units sold in five years is impressive, but Blackfriers’ Marketing blog says the stats just get better the closer you look — the iTunes store has sold more than 2.5 billion songs, 50 million TV shows and 1.3 million feature-length movies, and the trend lines just keep pointing up.
I’ve had two experiences with SanDisk and both their product and their customer service sucked. The situation was so bad that OfficeMax (which simply sold me the device) gave me a $25 gift certificate for the way one of their suppliers treated me. I think Apple is safe.
SanDisk’s products were the only ones you could get a few years ago for flash memory. They let Samsung take their dominance away just like that. And they want to take market share from *Apple*?!
Bill: I’ve never had problems with SanDisk products. I have with Apple products though, and they cost a heck of a lot more…
Hey Merc - maybe you could do a headline about how the new SanDisk player is really susceptible to viruses! And then about four paragraphs into the story mention that it’s only the case if the device itself has been hacked to run a completely irrevelevant operating system! Yeah, that would be cool!
I will RENT music about the same time that I will go iceskating in .
As far as I am concerned, their palyer (and it may be a technically superior device) is strictly a no-show.