BeerFiles is a sometimes irreverent blog concerning all things to do with IT, technology, people and the media from the point of view of a hard boiled technology journalist and commentator. Stan has been in the IT game for about a quarter of a century. He has seen and written about the rise and fall of more than a few IT players and made many friends, some of whom he has even crossed swords with on occasions. Everything in this blog is purely Stan’s opinion so if you agree, wish to expand upon, correct a post or tell Stan he’s a clueless know nothing, please feel free.

Dell DJ Ditty disappears to dot

by Stan Beer

Thursday, 24 August 2006

Last year, it was supposed to be the music player that was going to knock the iPod Shuffle out of the ball park, but now the DJ Ditty from Dell is no more. Dell, which is not having its most scintillating year, decided to cut its losses after watching the DJ Ditty get slaughtered by the Shuffle over 2006. Analysts have conjectured why the portable music player backed by a major hardware manufacturer such as Dell failed to make an impact in the market. The DJ Ditty was comparably priced to the iPod Shuffle at US$99 and it also had 512M of Flash RAM on board. In addition, unlike the iPod Shuffle, the DJ Ditty had an FM radio, a small LCD screen and its audio compression technology enabled the Dell device to hold almost twice as many songs as the Apple player. All that extra functionality at the same price as the iPod Shuffle, the resources of the largest PC manufacturer in the world behind it, and yet the DJ Ditty couldn't make the grade. Why? Despite what some analysts may think, this market is not just about the hardware. It's about the music to consumer supply chain. Apple understands this and now so does Dell. {moscomment} Tags See All Tags Apple  iPod  Powered By Joomla Tags Please enable JavaScript in your browser to post your comment!

 

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