Friday, January 12, 2007

Sansa Connect: Zing not Zune (and others)

A few weeks ago I talked about how I thought Real should buy MusicGremlin and one-up Microsoft with their Zune. Well, it appears they are more than covered with the pending introduction of Sandisk's Sansa Connect (MSRP $249).


It is a Wi-Fi-pod based on Zing's media platform, and looks pretty slick. With Sandisk's relationship with Real, and there recent support for Real's DRM scheme (in addtion to PlaysForSure) - I'm sure there are lots of compelling download-to-device and sharing use cases in the works. Unfortunately, I missed this device at CES but I'm sure we will see a lot more about it in the coming weeks.

Also, AOL's Tegic division (who acquired WildSeed last year) showed off their wireless-enabled media platform and will be working with Chinese up-and-coming manufacturer, Haier, to bring that to market this year.





Finally, iRiver also announced a Wi-Fi player as well. I didn't see this one at the show either, but the renderings look pretty nice.





I should have had in my 2007 predictions.... "this will be the year where people besides Apple start to do devices right".

No comments: