Apparently Dell has given up the fight against the iPod. The Dell Digital Jukebox, which was heralded as the iPod killer has lost. Apple’s iPod and iTunes continues to be the 800-lb. gorillas of the MP3 player and online music markets.
Dell is discontinuing the Digital Jukebox series of hard-drive based MP3 players. Once the remaining stocks are sold, Dell will continue to support them, but will not be manufacturing more. Dell is planning to concentrate on flash-based MP3 players according to the article on Ars Technica.
The real problem that Dell, River, Creative and most of the other MP3 players are having is they don’t understand the problem. MP3 players will only be truly successful if they have good software to support them—after all, an MP3 player without any music on it, isn’t very useful.
Currently, there is no software that competes with Apple’s iTunes software platform, which is available on both Windows and Mac platforms. Another advantage Apple’s iPod has over most competing products is the user friendly and intuitive interface. The final advantage is the iTunes Music Store, which is the simplest and most-effective of the legal music download services.