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iriver to Make Worlds Smallest DAP with the N20?
comment: 19 | Wednesday, July 19 (2006) 03:49PM | Posted by Michael
According to the knowledgeable folks at iriverfans.com, iriver's head company Reigncom, has disclosed info about its upcoming player, the iriver N20. According to them it's "the world's smallest MP3 Player with a screen." It seems like The iriver N20 will have similiar features to past players from the N-series as they've also said (and dissapointingly so) that they "will be focusing on the size, not features." Although we can't confirm any of this info, it's never a good sign when a company starts focusing on size and not on features.

LINK

Thanks, michaelzhang
Comments

Intelli

Comments: 125
 		Jul 19 (2006) 05:24PM  

I must disagree a bit. A player used for jogging or workout would be fine just as long as it's real real tiny. There's a market for every type of player, and feature-packed ones there's plenty of .


sdsdv10

Comments: 243
 		Jul 19 (2006) 08:21PM  

Intelli, what you write is perfectly true. But, I believe (and maybe others do to) that iriver would sell a great deal more Clix players at 4GB, than tiny N20's at say 1-2GB. I hate to see the focus shifted from such a nearly perfect DAP(Clix) to a item I am not at all interested in purchasing. It's just frustation talking...



PCJ

Comments: 54
 		Jul 19 (2006) 11:09PM  

I own an iRiver n10, and I love it. It has its fair share of flaws (bugged vbr playback, hard to read in the daylight) but I still really like it.



udauda
Location: the Golden State California
Comments: 61
 		Jul 20 (2006) 04:30AM  

It seems that iriver is a goner already....
Any signs of recovery?
Bring us some H3000 kinda thingies! dang it! :/



themushroom

Comments: 87
 		Jul 20 (2006) 06:37PM  

Looks like MobiBlue might have some competition... but I have to agree with sdsdv10, they should focus on product quality, not product size.


dap_pad

Comments: 519
 		Jul 20 (2006) 07:23PM  

i liked the N10... it was very stylish and this mite b a good competitor to the MobiBlu Cube...



Breakdown

Comments: 228
 		Jul 20 (2006) 11:27PM  

goodbye iriver



Design Fabulous

Comments: 1038
 		Jul 21 (2006) 10:27AM  

This is complete rubish.... These sketches are fake. iriver is not producing anymore DAP's. They are making PMPs now.



Dominic
Location: Ireland.
Comments: 2396
 		Jul 21 (2006) 10:53AM  

inside information DF?or is what you're saying speculation?
[ edited Jul 21 (2006) 02:41PM ]



ralphb

Comments: 154
 		Jul 21 (2006) 11:00AM  

it's never a good sign when a company starts focusing on size and not on features.

It worked for Apple.



Dominic
Location: Ireland.
Comments: 2396
 		Jul 21 (2006) 01:53PM  

its not a good sign for us though



Michael
Location: New York City
Comments: 2786
 		Jul 21 (2006) 02:27PM  

designfabulous, is that just speculation?


[ edited Jul 21 (2006) 02:29PM ]



ralphb

Comments: 154
 		Jul 21 (2006) 06:16PM  

its not a good sign for us though

They're not doing it for us, they're doing it for profit. That means aiming for the great unwashed masses, not the, erm, great unwashed visitors to specialist DAP websites. Joe Public don't care about OGG and gapless and battery life. They want size and style and bling.

That said, small is always good. Smaller is better. The MP3 player integrated into the headphones. With the phone. And the GPS receiver. With the mobile internet bluetoothed to the contact lenses. As a comodity. At a $100 a year. Nah, make it $50.



sdsdv10

Comments: 243
 		Jul 21 (2006) 08:47PM  

Joe Public don't care about OGG and gapless and battery life. They want size and style and bling.


/rant on
While this is a quote from ralphb, I think it is a sentiment held by many who post here. I also understand there is quite a strong anti-iPod on the forums [luckily, this is not voiced by the people running this site]. But I really think it is a bit disingenuous. Where I work, I know of 6 people with DAP’s. Four have various iPods, 1 has a Creative unit and one has an old style Sandisk player (which was only purchased because it as <$50 for 512MB, I know because the guy told me so). The four people who have iPod’s don’t show them off or say look what I got. They weren’t that interested in style, bling or anything else. In fact, in trying to locate people with experiences with DAP’s it took me some time and effort just to find them. Everyone single one of the iPod owners, liked it because it was simple and it worked. They believed the price was reasonable for what they were buying (which is quite different from trying to find the cheapest or most full featured product for their purchase dollar) and liked it’s style (which could be considered by some to be bland or too simplistic). I don’t believe it has much to do with marketing. The landscape it littered with strongly promoted ill-conceived ideas (Nokia Ngage, MS WebTV, the list goes on and on). All had plenty of money and marketing know-how to push the products, yet ultimately they were unsuccessful. Are there examples of slick marketing selling products, sure there are. Hell, my favorite from back when I was a kid was the “Pet Rock”. People paying big money to buy worthless rocks, go figure. Most of these are true fads that die out quickly. The iPod has been the sales leader for several years. You don’t get that on marketing alone. People like the product. You don’t, fine. But please give the “unwashed” masses a little more credit than that. They deserve it. What to label me a fan-boy, fine. I still don’t own a DAP. I need >8GB (would prefer >10GB) in a nicely styled player, that is easy to use and I would like to spend no more than $200 (again preferably <$150, I’m cheap OK). Apple doesn’t make a product like that, so currently they don’t get my money. Right now I am reading up on the Gmini 400 (as the PocketDish model for $150). What I would really like is a 10GB Clix for $175. I know, I know, not going to happen any time soon. No problem, I can wait…
/rant off

As for this player, how big a market is there is really small DAP’s. The bigger money is in the mainstream. I would figure it would cost nearly as much to design a new hard drive player (to complete with ZVM, 5G iPod, or Gigabeat S) or improve the Clix than to make a Cube, Pebble, Shuffle competitor. Even if the produce the best player on the market, what in terms of total sales are they going to get out of it. This is a perfect market for the small manufactures with less overhead. Iriver being one of he bigger players, they would be better suited going after the larger markets. Just my thoughts, and they worth exactly what you paid for them. Nada




Design Fabulous

Comments: 1038
 		Jul 22 (2006) 06:33AM  

You guys don't know about iriver's future yet? They are going to be a PMP / electronic dictionary company. I also heard this from a freind's uncle, who works for iriver. Think about it: all the new players are PMP's. Hmmm...



Breakdown

Comments: 228
 		Jul 22 (2006) 09:22AM  

the V10 isn't a PMP sorry. I consider a PMP when it's something like archos, but just adding more codecs and leaving the screen at a measily 256k definetly doesn't qualify it as a PMP.



enigman

Comments: 216
 		Jul 22 (2006) 10:14AM  

I heard they're going to make gaming devices and some small daps.
[ edited Jul 22 (2006) 10:15AM ]



Breakdown

Comments: 228
 		Jul 23 (2006) 05:41AM  

^?
small daps? I knew they were going into gaming but small daps :/



thesamc

Comments: 11
 		Aug 28 (2006) 01:03PM  

I want one



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