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Gateway attempts to outflank PC rivals
New products take spotlight
By BOB KEEFE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
SAN DIEGO -- Gateway Inc. hasn't led its competitors in much of anything for a very long time. But as the computer industry pushes into the broader business of consumer electronics, Gateway may be ahead of the pack for a change.
On Tuesday, Gateway introduced 14 products, from a budget-minded MP3 music player to a DVD recorder and two flat-screen televisions, in a move that solidifies its transformation from a PC maker to a marketer of gadgets and home electronics.
Since May, the company has introduced almost 100 new products, a wider array of consumer electronics offerings than any other domestic PC maker.
"We're about 90 percent done with what we needed to get done," Gateway Chairman Ted Waitt said in a telephone interview after announcing the new products. "Now it's time to execute."
There's little doubt that Gateway needs to do something different.
The company, which helped usher in the consumer PC business when Waitt co-founded it in an Iowa farmhouse in 1985, has fallen from being a leader in the industry to an also-ran.
Based in the San Diego suburb of Poway, Gateway has lost money in 11 of its last 12 quarters. Its stock price has dropped from about $80 a share four years ago to $4.58 on Tuesday. Since 2000, it has laid off or plans to lay off more than 18,000 workers.
Once the biggest seller of PCs by some measures, it now has only about 3 percent of the U.S. market. In the third quarter, when PC sales surged worldwide, Gateway was one of the few companies that saw its sales dip.
After watching other strategies flop, Gateway is now counting in a big way on the consumer electronics business.
The next two months will be critical. Traditionally, 40 percent of all sales of products like digital cameras, high-end televisions and DVD players come during the holiday shopping season, according to Scott Edwards, whom Waitt hired away from Sony Corp. this year to run Gateway's consumer business.
"We're hoping to see a big impact" in the fourth quarter, Edwards said.
For Gateway and other PC makers stuck in a maturing market, diversifying into consumer electronics is a strategy that seems to make sense.
Compared with the PC industry, the consumer electronics business is growing fast. Moreover, profit margins on some of those goods are 15 percent to 20 percent, compared with 4 percent or less for low-end computers.
"All these products have higher margins than PCs, and all are in growth categories," Waitt said. "And these are all markets on the rise, rather than the PC business, which is acting more like a mature market these days."
Of course, that's why other major computer makers -- namely Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. -- also are jumping into the consumer electronics business. Dell recently announced it is selling its own LCD television, MP3 player and other goods.
Waitt, of course, knows firsthand how Dell can hammer his business.
While Dell and Gateway pioneered the direct-to-the-customer business model in their early days, Dell refined it to a science, leaving Gateway and most others in its dust.
"We've learned a lot from the past," Waitt said.
Gateway plans to do two things differently this time, he said.
First, it will push for innovation in design -- something that Dell and the PC business as a whole isn't known for.
Second, it will rely on its network of stores, which Dell -- while it has kiosks in malls -- doesn't have.
"Ninety-four percent of consumer electronics are bought at retail stores," Waitt said. "That's a pretty big piece of the business.
"Dell's a great competitor ... and a fast follower," he said. "But we're going to push the envelope on innovation, and we're going to offer more."
All the computer makers, meanwhile, also face stiff competition from traditional electronics retailers such as Best Buy, Fry's and others that have been in the game much longer.
The advantage PC makers have over traditional retailers is that many of the gadgets -- digital cameras or portable music players, for instance -- are dependent on the PC.
"They [Gateway and other computer companies] can all make various cases that they have something more -- specific knowledge, more customer care, suites of products that are designed to work together," International Data Corp. analyst Roger Kay said. "It's not everything, but it is a differentiating value."
Gateway may also have a significant advantage because of its head start, said Jennifer Gerlach, an analyst with technology research firm ARS Inc.
"Dell at the moment is a little behind the mark," she said. "And Gateway is ahead of the game in this round."
One of the areas where Gateway is already seeing the advantage of being ahead of its competitors is in the business of plasma TVs, where this year it became the sales leader. It also is moving toward the front of the pack in sales of digital cameras and home networking equipment.
"It feels good to walk into our stores," Waitt said. "It's the best product line we've ever had in the history of our company."
Cassie you're gonna hurt yourself trying to find the dark lining in our silver cloud today! Relax there is at least one more licensed OEM to come...pace yourself.
Wow Todd, that sounds just like the argument cassie was making about the digEplayer....
it's all so confusing this brutal abusing....
UPDATE - Gateway unveils consumer electronics products
Tuesday November 11, 1:08 pm ET
By Caroline Humer
(Adds data storage push in paragraph 2, analyst comment)
NEW YORK, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Gateway Inc. (NYSE:GTW - News), the personal computer company that is diving into consumer electronics, on Tuesday introduced a digital music player, flat-panel televisions, and a DVD recorder as it gears up for the important holiday season.
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The Poway, California, company also said that it plans to break into data storage for businesses by offering both direct-attached and networked storage products. It will launch those products next week.
"We feel that we're a completely new Gateway," Chief Executive Officer Ted Waitt said during the product launch in New York, surrounded by plasma television screens and the giant cow-patterned boxes that are Gateway's calling card.
The launch was held in one of its refurbished stores, which the company says are an integral part of its strategy to sell consumer electronics.
"It's pretty crucial to see us start getting more traction since we've invested pretty significantly in remodeling and refurbishing the stores," Waitt said in an interview ahead of the launch.
Gateway made an early push in an increasingly crowded field of PC makers targeting the consumer electronics market in an effort to offset weak corporate demand for PCs. The top two PC makers, Dell Inc. (NasdaqNM:DELL - News) and Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ - News), have also launched a slew of gadgets.
Apple Computer Inc. (NasdaqNM:AAPL - News), popular with schools and consumers for its cutting edge design, is also a competitor.
Gateway, which has posted eleven consecutive quarters of losses, has redone nearly all of its 190 stores in the past few months to make them more user-friendly. The stores have been highly criticized by some analysts, who say that they are too costly and weigh on profits.
Gateway is betting the stores will help its consumer electronics business grow rapidly in the next few months.
"You're going to see our consumer business essentially double from this quarter to next quarter," Waitt said.
"Last holiday season we had one plasma TV, a lot of PCs and some third-party cameras. As we get into this holiday season we'll have close to 100 new products."
But Gateway needs to be able to execute its plans to grow, according to Stephen Baker, at market researcher NPD Group.
"I think that's the question. There isn't any question they are doing the right stuff," Baker said, pointing to their varied products.
So far, Dell, which used its large volumes to cut prices and take share from Gateway in the personal computer market, is not threatening Gateway, Baker said.
"Dell hasn't been particularly aggressive. Some products don't play to their core competencies. People want to see the TV and they do want to hear the audio (before they buy)," he said.
Gateway's digital music player has a 20-gigabyte hard drive, which can store thousands of songs. It sells for $299, the same price as Dell's comparable player after a rebate. Apple's iPod 20-gigabyte machine sells for $399.
Gateway also said it added a 23-inch and 26-inch flat-panel television for $1,499 and $2,299 respectively, bringing the number of television models it offers to 12.
The company also introduced two notebook computers and a tablet PC among other items.
Now we just need the ,"Gateway chooses local company to produce Ipod-killer" stories. Anytime now would be fine...
These pics remove all doubt pretty much...
http://forums.designtechnica.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3325
Toshiba's Groundbreaking 1.8-Inch Hard Disk Drive Reaches Three-Million-Produced Milestone
IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 11, 2003--
Company Builds the Small Form Factor HDD Category, Leading its Expansion Into New Markets and Enabling Today's Generation of Digital Devices
Toshiba Storage Device Division (SDD) today announced it has surpassed the milestone of cumulative production of three million 1.8-inch hard disk drives (HDDs), validating the need for small form factor, high-capacity storage to create today's new breed of consumer electronics devices and mobile products.
With its place "under the hood" of some of today's hottest portable gadgets, Toshiba's 1.8-inch HDD has been an immediate success since its launch in 2000. The small form factor HDD delivers the unbeatable combination of high-performance and high-capacity storage, enabling product manufacturers to offer unprecedented functionality in mobile products. Toshiba's 1.8-inch HDDs are the heart of today's exciting new mobile entertainment devices, handheld computers, ultraportable notebooks, portable handheld GPS units, MP3 players, automotive jukebox systems and other specialized digital products.
"Toshiba is the first company to successfully market storage products in the 1.8-inch category and currently is the only 1.8-inch supplier shipping multiple platforms in volume today," said Amy Dalphy, manager, HDD business unit, Toshiba SDD. "We looked at the trends, listened to our customers and then put a stake in the ground that this product was the right fit for emerging business computing tools and consumer electronics products."
Toshiba's 1.8-inch HDD has been a key element of the company's successful strategy to expand its business into non-PC and consumer electronics applications. As advances in HDD technology continue to evolve and push the limits on areal density and speed, these tiny HDDs have transformed basic products into compelling power tools.
"We are thrilled to achieve this significant production milestone of three million units, proving this storage category is capable of driving explosive growth in smaller and more mobile digital devices," Dalphy added. "With our industry-leading research and development, this achievement is only the beginning of continued technology advancements that will revolutionize mobile digital devices."
Toshiba's 1.8-inch hard disk drives began mass production in 2000 with a removable 1.8-inch PC Card HDD in a 2GB(a) capacity. The company has subsequently introduced a series of products that consistently push the borders of capacity and performance, including a 1.8-inch 5GB PC Card HDD and 1.8-inch embedded HDDs available in 5GB, 10GB, 15GB, 20GB, 30GB and 40GB capacities.
Toshiba estimates the market for 1.8-inch HDDs will rise to 70 million in 2010. As the demand for small form factor HDDs continues, Toshiba is responding by doubling its production volume to 600,000 units per month by March 2004, including in-house production and outsourced manufacturing by Matsushita Kotobuki Electronics Industries, Ltd.
"This production, along with the drive's tremendous advantages in size, weight, low power consumption and overall performance ensures that Toshiba's 1.8-inch HDD will continue to be a winner in the market for mobile digital products," Dalphy said.
For more information about Toshiba's line of 1.8-inch HDDs, visit www.harddrives.toshiba.com.
About Toshiba Storage Device Division
Toshiba SDD, a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., leads the market in the development, design and manufacturing of DVD-ROM, slim CD-R/CD-RW/DVD-R/DVD-RW, combination CD-R/CD-RW/DVD-R/DVD-RW, 1.8-inch hard disk drives and 2.5-inch hard disk drives. Toshiba SDD markets high-quality peripherals to original equipment manufacturers, value-added resellers, value-added dealers, systems integrators and distributors in the United States. Inherent in the company's product line is the high-quality engineering and manufacturing that has established Toshiba products as worldwide leaders. For more information, visit www.sdd.toshiba.com.
About Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc. (TAIS)
Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., TAIS is comprised of three divisions: Digital Products Division, Digital Solutions Division and the Storage Device Division. Together, the three divisions provide mobile products and solutions, communications, storage and imaging products and services. Products include industry leading portable computers, PDAs, projectors, DVD/CD recordable products and hard disk drives for computers, telephony products, digital imaging systems, cable modems, servers, wireless solutions and services. TAIS provides sales, marketing and services for its wide range of information products in the United States and Latin America. TAIS is an independent operating company owned by Toshiba America, Inc., a subsidiary of Toshiba Corporation, which is a world leader in high technology and integrated manufacturing of electrical and electronic components, products and systems. Toshiba has global sales of over $47 billion and more than 300 subsidiaries and affiliates worldwide. For more information visit the company's Web site at www.toshiba.com.
(a) Toshiba defines a megabyte (MB) as 1,000,000 bytes and a gigabyte (GB) as 1,000,000,000 bytes.
Toshiba to Double Production of Popular 1.8-inch HDD
November 10, 2003 10:02 PM US Eastern Timezone
TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 10, 2003--
Pioneering Small Form Factor Brought HDD into New Markets, Enabled a New Generation of Digital Devices
Toshiba Corporation today announced that it would meet fast increasing demand for its 1.8-inch hard disk drives (HDD) by doubling production to 600,000 units a month by March 2004. The innovative drive, a winner since its 2000 launch, delivers high-performance, high-capacity storage in a small form factor that has supported creation of today's new breed of consumer electronics devices and mobile products. The drive's versatility is reflected in the recent achievement of cumulative production of 3 million units on consistently rising demand. Toshiba will support increased production by expanding outsourcing, including manufacturing at Matsushita Kotobuki Electronics Industries, Ltd.
As the storage device of choice for some of the hottest portable gadgets on the market, Toshiba's 1.8-inch HDD has supported manufacturers in delivering unprecedented functionality to exciting new mobile entertainment products. Handheld computers, ultraportable notebooks, portable handheld GPS units, MP3 players and automotive MP3 jukebox systems are just a few of the specialized digital devices made possible by the performance of Toshiba's 1.8-inch HDD. And that performance, combined with superb advantages in size, weight and low power consumption, assures that Toshiba's 1.8-inch HDD will continue to be a winner in the market for mobile digital products in this age of ubiquitous computing. Toshiba estimates show the market for 1.8-inch HDD rising to 25 million units in 2006.
"Toshiba is the first company to successfully market storage products in the 1.8-inch category and currently is the only 1.8-inch supplier shipping in volume today," said Hiroyuki Sato, Senior Manager of Storage Device Div., HDD Sales & Marketing Dept. of Toshiba's Digital Media Network Company. "We looked at the trends, listened to our customers, and were convinced that this kind of small but powerful, highly functional drive, was the right product for the fusion of computing tools and consumer electronics products.
"We were very happy to pass the milestone of production of three million units. By further increasing production capacity, we will confirm that our 1.8-inch drive is capable of driving explosive growth in smaller and more mobile digital devices. As far as we are concerned, this is only the beginning of a market where we will do all we need to do to grow and advance."
Toshiba's created the 1.8-inch HDD market in 2000, when it started mass production of a PC-Card-type removable 1.8-inch HDD with a 2GB capacity. The company has subsequently rolled out a series of products that consistently push back the borders of capacity and performance: a 1.8-inch, 5mm height, 5GB embedded HDD in 2001; and a 5mm height 10GB embedded model and 8mm height, 20GB and 30GB embedded HDD in 2002. Toshiba's latest 1.8-inch embedded HDD offers a capacity of 40GB with 8mm height and a 20GB capacity with 5mm height.
The 1.8-inch HDD drive has been a key element of Toshiba's successful strategy to expand its storage business into non-PC and consumer electronics applications. Advances in hard drive technology continues to push the limits on areal density and speed, and Toshiba has used the power of these diminutive HDDs to transform basic products into compellingly necessary power tools.
Toshiba is also a technology leader in 2.5-inch HDD. Here too demand is growing beyond the core market of portable computers, and the 2.5-inch HDD is now a key component of car navigation systems. Toshiba developed and started mass production of a highly reliable, vibration resistant 2.5-inch HDD for automotive use in 2001, and expects cumulative production of these drives to reach one million units by the end of 2003. Toshiba's cumulative production for all 2.5-inch HDDs now stands at 60 million units.
Contacts
Toshiba Corporation
Midori Suzuki, ++81-3-3457-2105
press@toshiba.co.jp
LOL. Nice pic philo. eom
OT Clock ticks for Web on a wristwatch
By Michael Kanellos
CNET News.com
November 10, 2003, 11:58 AM PT
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Those who want to receive information from the Internet through a wristwatch or fridge magnet may have to wait a little longer.
Microsoft's Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT), which the company unveiled last year right before the Comdex trade show, is still in testing, according to a company representative, who declined to give an estimated release date. Microsoft earlier said the technology would be launched in the fall.
SPOT seeks to remove any headaches or impediments involved in getting online. With SPOT, Internet data can be broadcast over a nationwide FM radio network to wristwatches, personal digital assistants, refrigerators and other devices. Conceivably, a SPOT-enabled alarm clock could publish the latest headlines when it wakes up its owner.
The data feed will adjust for travel, so that a traveler who flies from Seattle to San Jose, Calif., will start getting California weather reports when he or she gets off the plane, Rich Rashid, senior vice president of Microsoft Research said.
Watchmakers Fossil and Suunto have said they will release SPOT devices, while Microsoft will market a service, called MSN Direct, that will provide the data feed for a $9.95 monthly fee. Microsoft is testing the project in eight metropolitan areas in North America, but the plan is to have the network blanket 100 cities on the continent.
National Semiconductor is making the chipsets for the project.
Although apparently delayed, the SPOT program fits into the tradition of the "next big thing" taking some time to gather momentum. Microsoft's Tablet PC was previewed at Comdex 2001 and then launched just before the convention in 2002. Although sales of the operating system have generally met analysts' forecasts, expectations for it started low, and some computer makers groused about the high price of the software.
Simultaneous Media Usage Study: MP3 Users Also IM, Use Cell Phones
Mobile Consumers Are Driving Multiple Wireless Categories
COLUMBUS, OH -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 11/10/2003 -- Consumers who use MP3 players are, in most cases, the same consumers who use cell phones and instant messaging, according to a recent BIGresearch survey.
The Simultaneous Media Usage Survey (n= 13,414), released earlier this month, showed that 78 percent of regular or occasional MP3 users also use cell phones, and 83 percent regularly use an instant messenger.
"These are consumers who are constantly sharing information," said Joe Pilotta, vice president of research at BIGresearch. "It makes them a very desirable audience for marketers -- once a message gets through to this group, they tell everyone and word spreads."
Highlighted Links
Visit BIGresearch online.
In fact, the survey shows, 93 percent of MP3 users regularly or occasionally seek advice about products or services they've purchased while 97 percent regularly or occasionally give advice.
More important to retailers' bottom line, however, is the fact that 80 percent of MP3 consumers say word of mouth is very important or important in influencing their purchasing decisions. And, when watching TV, 93 percent of users say they regularly or occasionally tune out when a commercial appears.
Said Pilotta: "Reaching this audience could mean the difference between the success and failure of a product."
About BIGresearch
BIGresearch is a market intelligence firm providing analysis of consumer behavior in the areas of retail, politics and media. The twice-annual Simultaneous Media Usage Survey (SIMM) quantifies how the public consumes media and the impact those patterns have on buying habits in a fragmented and changing marketplace.
BIGresearch's methodology provides the most accurate consumer information in the industry with a margin of error of +/- 1 percent. Complimentary top line findings are available at www.bigresearch.com.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact:
Jennifer Kronstain
(267) 257-9422
jennifer@jenniferkronstain.com
Music Industry Plays Familiar Tune
By George Mannes
Senior Writer
11/10/2003 09:57 AM EST
Click here for more stories by George Mannes
Music industry bigwigs seem to think a round of mergers can pull the industry out of its funk. But getting bigger may not be the answer.
Recent weeks have seen Sony (SNE:NYSE - commentary - research) and Bertelsmann reach a nonbinding agreement to combine their recorded music businesses. Meanwhile, talks reportedly continue over Time Warner's (TWX:NYSE - commentary - research) efforts to combine its Warner Music unit with EMI.
So clearly, music executives believe the so-called economies of scale gained in mergers can help reverse the industry's steep slide. But given that the five biggest players already own at least three-quarters of the market, it's possible that such a strategy ignores the problem at the heart of the industry's well-chronicled decline. If an oligopoly isn't working out for its participants, why should bigger oligopolists fare any better?
Yet suggesting that the major labels' current market shares should suffice ignores the problems facing the industry, says Hilary Rosen, former CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America and now an analyst and commentator.
"It's not about market share," Rosen says. "It's about revenue and margin."
Tin Ear
By now, just about everyone has heard the discord in the recorded music business. Global music sales fell 17% from 1999 to 2002, and continued their slide this year, according the IFPI worldwide record industry trade group.
Meanwhile, the big players have continued to dominate the trade. Recent data indicate that the industry leaders -- Sony, Bertelsmann's BMG, Warner Music, EMI and Vivendi Universal's (V:NYSE - commentary - research) Universal Music Group -- have an 83% share of the U.S. album market and a 75% of the worldwide market.
Record companies have already cut costs to adjust to declining revenue, says Rosen. By merging, they expect to cut them further. Manufacturing, distribution and sales costs, along with corporate overhead, all can benefit from economics of scale.
"What you're looking for in the mergers is, you've got significant infrastructure," says Rosen. "And you need enough releases going through the pipelines to justify the size of the infrastructure."
But certain hard costs -- signing artists, producing a record, marketing and promotion -- can't be cut further, Rosen thinks. "Those are the most expensive pieces of the business, and you don't save money by merging," she notes. What companies are likely to do after a merger, she says, is increase the number of profitable artists going through the pipelines -- in other words, get rid of less profitable releases.
"I think in all of these merger discussions," she continues, "you have to assume there are going to be significant roster cuts."
In that regard, the music business may find a lesson or two to be learned from the movie industry.
Keeping Up With the Goldwyns
As in the record business, movie studios move a limited number of creative works through a worldwide distribution system. And, as in the record business, a handful of companies claim a similarly large collective market share. Last year, the top five movie conglomerates shared around 70% of the box office.
Yet mergers-and-acquisition activity among film studios is a nonstory. No one in the movie industry seems to be itching for further consolidation.
Of course, the movie industry hasn't been hammered by piracy, offline and online, to the degree that the music business has in recent years. And the major record labels have many more discrete products to distribute than the film studios: hundreds or thousands of CD titles, vs. a few dozen movies.
Movies have multiple revenue streams, says Rosen: theatrical releases, television, pay-per-view and home video. But as piracy cuts into record sales, the music companies don't have alternative revenue streams: "It's hitting primary, secondary and tertiary markets," she says.
Though Rosen says that, as far as the music industry's problems go, the contrasts with the movies are more striking than any similarities, perhaps there is a lesson to be drawn from the movies. It's an old lesson, however.
Back in the 1950s, the movie industry was under attack from television. After decades of having cornered the market on moving-image entertainment, movie theaters had in TV a competitor that had the advantages of being not only more convenient for consumers, but also free. People didn't have to walk or drive to a movie house and buy a ticket to watch a story told to them on a screen; all they had to do was walk into the living room and turn on the TV. The competition was comparable to what record companies face from online file-sharing today. And it was legal, too.
How did the movie studios respond? In a variety of ways. They experimented with new formats: 3-D (a failure) and Cinemascope and other widescreen formats (which proved more successful). After shunning TV for a while, they learned they could make money by producing for the new medium.
Plus, they got small. Though the studios once operated in a universe that had so much demand for product that it made sense to keep vast numbers of actors and crew members on staff, they shed most of the infrastructure and overhead that had once been essential to the golden age of Hollywood.
Certainly, the record labels have already made cutbacks to deal with the new realities. And yet the "significant infrastructure" that Rosen refers to still doesn't have enough product, or enough profitable product, to make the system work. Perhaps the answer is a more radical pruning of what it means to be a record label.
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After all, among the largest record companies, size does not appear to be a particular benefit. Universal Music Group has the largest market share of any of the five major labels, both in the U.S. and worldwide. Yet it's suffering along with its smaller compatriots. As Vivendi reported Friday, UMG's third-quarter sales declined 9% from the third quarter of 2002 on a constant-currency basis. In the first half of the year, UMG had an operating loss of 42 million euros, compared to an operating profit of 169 million euros in the first half of 2002.
To be sure, if one record company happened to have 90% of the market -- a Microsoftian feat -- it would undoubtedly turn a profit.
But maybe record labels are looking in the wrong direction. Maybe the solution isn't to get bigger, but to get smaller.
PhatNoise To Launch HDD Video Shuttle For Car
By Staff
TWICE
10/13/2003
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LOS ANGELES— PhatNoise, the OE supplier of the Kenwood Keg, expects to offer a new MP3 shuttle device that uses voice recognition to easily access MP3 tracks by artist or other categories.
In addition, the company is working on a new car-video shuttle.
PhatNoise recently announced a partnership with Texas Instruments to produce a PhatNoise system using TI's DSP chips for voice response. This would enable easy voice access of MP3 tracks, which is particularly useful in HDD systems which store the equivalent of hundreds of CDs. PhatNoise said it is currently working with aftermarket suppliers who could offer the new system in a year.
PhatNoise also plans to use voice recognition to access video programming on a new hard-drive system for compressed video, said Dan Benyamin, chief technology officer and co-founder. The unit could shuttle hundreds of movies downloaded from a PC, PVR or other source. They player would be about the same size as current PhatNoise units, he noted. PhatNoise expects to show the product at CES and said it is currently working with two automakers who may offer it in 2005 or 2006.
Bon Jovi Uses Power of Samsung Electronics' Online Network to Promote New Album 'This Left Feels Right'
Friday November 7, 12:51 pm ET
Samsung and Bon Jovi Team Up - Kick Off With Internet Promo Campaign and Exclusive Live Concert Webcast on www.samsungusa.com November 15
RIDGEFIELD PARK, N.J., Nov. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Samsung Electronics America, Inc., a world leader in digital convergence products, and Bon Jovi, one of world's most popular and legendary rock bands, are teaming up for a unique relationship that will change the way music is marketed on the Internet. Beginning November 7, Samsung will be promoting Bon Jovi's new album, This Left Feels Right, via ads on its powerful online publishing network, which includes front-page real estate on more than 350 top consumer and business websites and delivers over a billion impressions per month. Samsung will also be promoting This Left Feels Right on its own website (www.samsungusa.com) via an exclusive live webcast of a Bon Jovi's concert in Atlantic City on November 15th and an exciting consumer sweepstakes to win an autographed Bon Jovi guitar.
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"Samsung is honored to be working together with one of the greatest rock bands of all time, Bon Jovi, and pioneering a totally new way to launch, listen to and buy music on the Internet," said Peter Weedfald, Senior Vice President of Strategic Marketing, Samsung Electronics America, Inc. "Our vast e-publishing network is an unparalleled tool to drive sales of the new album while promoting the new Samsung-Napster YP910GS MP3 player."
The YP910GS can store over 5,000 songs and it is the only MP3 player designed to operate seamlessly with the newly launched Napster 2.0 service (MSRP $399; Available at Best Buy, Amazon.com, J&R Music World, CompUSA and Crutchfield).
Beginning November 7, banner ads announcing the November 15th simulcast concert on www.samsungusa.com and promoting Bon Jovi's new album will appear across the web. The ads ("On a special night in November Bon Jovi fans will be staying home in droves") allow consumers to click to a special site (www.samsungusa.com/bonjovi) where they can enter to win an autographed Bon Jovi guitar and Samsung Electronics' products. Fans can also hear cuts from This Left Feels Right by clicking on an image of the new Samsung/Napster YP910GS MP3 player, and even immediately purchase copies of the new album via a link to online sales sites.
"We are very excited about beginning a partnership with Samsung," noted Jon Bon Jovi. "We are always looking for new, creative ways to get our music out to our fans. Samsung has a very maverick approach to reaching the public online which is going to help the fans interact with our band and the band connect with our fans."
The band's newest album, This Left Feels Right, is a collection of their greatest hits... with a twist. The twelve songs on the album were each stripped down to their core elements before being reconstructed and re-crafted into entirely new interpretations. The November 15th concert being webcast by Samsung is the second of two exclusive performances -- the only two times Bon Jovi will bring to life these versions of the greatest hits as included on This Left Feels Right. The November 15th webcast will give Bon Jovi fans around the world a front row seat to witness one of music's most exciting live acts in a unique and intimate setting. The full concert will kick off at 8:00pm (ET) from the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Samsung's online network of 350 top consumer publication Web sites features news sites such as cnn.com, tech sites such as pcworld.com, entertainment sites like people.com, yahoolaunch.com and ew.com (Entertainment Weekly), and music sites such as rollingstone.com, vibe.com and spin.com.
About Samsung Electronics America, Inc.
Headquartered in Ridgefield Park, NJ, Samsung Electronics America, Inc. (SEA), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., markets a broad range of award-winning, advanced digital consumer electronics and information systems products. The SEA organization oversees the North American operations of Samsung Telecommunications USA, Samsung Electronics Canada and Samsung Electronics Mexico. Please visit www.samsungusa.com for more information.
About Samsung Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductor, telecommunication, and digital convergence technology. Samsung Electronics employs approximately 70,000 people in 87 offices spanning 47 countries. The company is the world's largest producer of memory chips, TFT-LCDs, CDMA mobile phones, monitors and VCRs. Samsung Electronics consists of four main business units: Digital Media Network, Device Solution Network, Telecommunication Network and Digital Appliance Network Businesses. For more information, please visit http:// www.samsung.com.
About Bon Jovi
Bon Jovi are one of the most beloved and popular bands around the globe. Bon Jovi have sold 100 million records and performed more than 2100 concerts in 47 countries for more than 32 million fans. The band, originally from New Jersey, includes Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, Tico Torres and David Bryan. This latest release, This Left Feels Right, is a collection of their Greatest Hits... with a twist -- each song was deconstructed and reconstructed anew. The album release comes hot on the heels of the band wrapping up a worldwide concert tour in support of their 2002 album, Bounce. The Bounce tour's included a concert in London's Hyde Park before more than 92,000 fans and culminated with two sold-out homecoming concerts at New Jersey's Giants Stadium. For more information, please visit http://www.bonjovi.com. Bon Jovi are on Island Records, part of the Island/Def Jam Music Group.
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Source: Samsung Electronics America, Inc.
Movie moguls prepare all-out attack on piracy
Sunday, November 9, 2003
By Patrick Goldstein / Los Angeles Times
On a Monday morning in late September, just weeks after the music industry hit hundreds of file-sharing consumers with lawsuits, News Corp. Chairman Peter Chernin held an anti-piracy summit meeting in his executive conference room on the studio lot. On hand was an impressive array of top studio brass, including Viacom Entertainment Group Chairman Jonathan Dolgen, Time Warner Entertainment Group Chairman Jeff Bewkes, Warner Bros. Chairman Barry Meyer, MGM Chairman Alex Yemenidjian and Sony Entertainment Vice Chairman Yair Landau.
The studio chiefs, along with Motion Picture Association of America President Jack Valenti, listened intently as Universal Music President Zach Horowitz, a chief architect of the record industry's anti-piracy strategy, gave a report from the battle front. Horowitz said that a stream of TV reports and front-page stories about the lawsuits, in addition to various educational efforts, seemed to have slowed the pace of illegal downloading.
But Horowitz offered a blunt prediction: In a year, the outlaw file-sharing services that have helped send record company profits into a downward spiral would be crowded with movies and TV shows. If you're going to file lawsuits, he advised, do it right away before millions of people online are sharing movies and TV shows for free.
Not everyone thought it was time to sue. Valenti launched into one of his signature orations, lobbying the moguls to continue exploring more advanced technological copy protection. When Valenti concluded, according to several people in the room, Chernin bluntly told the MPAA chief, "Jack, I totally disagree with you." Chernin urged the studio chiefs to follow the lead of the music companies and move ahead with lawsuits.
When the Fox chief called for a raised-hand vote, it was unanimous. While no one will confirm a specific timetable, the studios have instructed Valenti to begin preparations for lawsuits aimed at avid file sharers, be they junior-high-schoolers, computer-savvy techno geeks or grandmothers.
If there were any doubt how seriously these entertainment behemoths view the threat of piracy, it came into focus near the end of the meeting. According to several parties in the room, Paramount's Dolgen, exasperated by the lengthy debate, spoke up, saying, "It sounds like all we're doing here is arguing over the size of the coffin."
It's hard to go anywhere today and not find someone arguing about about digital entertainment, from the halls of Congress to college dorms to family living rooms.
-- The music industry has been ravaged by illegal downloading, forcing record companies to fire thousands of employees and trim their rosters of low-selling performers.
-- The movie business has been in an uproar over the MPAA's Oscar screener ban, which was prompted by the industry's fear that DVD copies of the year's top films sent to critics and talent guild members would fall into the hands of pirates.
-- A group of media companies has sued Replay TV -- a system that allows TV viewers to watch programs when they want -- to prevent the company's digital video recorders from automatically skipping commercials or allowing viewers to transmit TV programs or movies to other Replay users on the Internet.
The music industry's dramatic profit slide, which began with the arrival of Napster and other illegal downloading services, has given Hollywood such a bad case of the heebie-jeebies that when movie executives get on the subject of piracy they begin to sound like county sheriffs.
"People have been stealing music and now they are out there stealing our movies," says 20th Century Fox Film Co-chairman Jim Gianopulos. "There is a massive looting going on that's only going to get worse when these (digital video recording) storage devices become commonplace."
The piracy battle lines are clear. On one side are technology fans and entrepreneurs such as rock manager Jim Guerinot who believe media conglomerates are fighting a losing battle trying to rein in the digital revolution. "You can't protect content -- kids live to hack every new anti-piracy gimmick like they're playing a video game," says Guerinot, who manages the bands No Doubt and the Offspring. "These companies can't be in the entertainment business if they're in the arm-wrestling litigation business. It's not a game they can win."
In the other corner are media conglomerates such as News Corp. and Time Warner, who have been lobbying for more aggressive legal enforcement, legislative protection and education offensives to protect their content from digital pirates. Warners' Barry Meyer, the executive who instigated the Oscar screener ban, sees piracy as "a life-or-death issue for our business." In fact, Meyer believes the word "pirate" doesn't do justice to the crime. "To young people, ãpiracy' means something swashbuckling and cool," he says. "A better word would be ãtheft.' "
Emotions have been running high because the piracy debate heralds a reordering, if not an entire reinvention, of the way entertainment is consumed. The travails of the record industry are just the first nasty shock in what will eventually be a technological earthquake. Schwinn went bankrupt when it was slow to adjust to the arrival of carbon fiber and aluminum frame mountain bikes. Kodak has never recovered from ignoring the new technology of digital camera and camcorders.
"As an industry, we are going to have to adjust. The tide is coming in whether we want it to or not," says Sony America Chairman Howard Stringer. "We've got to redefine our relationship with our customers and recognize that it's a two-way dialogue. We can't sit back and close our eyes for five years, the way the record business did before they began to deal with new technology."
Entertainment companies, especially in profitable times, remain wedded to the past. Years after video became the preferred method of filmmaking for everyone from George Lucas to camcorder-wielding parents, movies are still shown in theaters on film projectors, a century-old technology. It took the music business four years -- from fall 1999, when Napster swept through college campuses, to this past month, when Apple's iTunes Music Store became available for PC computers -- to develop a legal file-sharing service that had both a diverse selection of music and few onerous restrictions on its use. During that time, consumer technology has exploded with consumer-friendly inventions, from cellphone cameras and plasma HDTVs to Blackberries, iPods and Nokia's new N-Gage, a cellphone, MP3 player and game system all combined in one device.
Music executives admit they were slow to react to the sudden appearance of Napster, but contend they hit a variety of speed bumps, especially in getting artists and music publishers to give permission to sell their music on the Internet. "There definitely was a cautiousness born out of a concern that we were dealing with things we didn't fully understand," Horowitz explains.
"We didn't have anyone who understood technology," says Universal Music Group Chairman Doug Morris. "We had lawyers involved (in the creation of legal downloading services) who'd only read about technology in books. Look at Steve Jobs -- he changed the world. It required a technology company guy to bridge the gap, because having run a company like Pixar, he understood both creativity issues and technology."
Despite having seen the consequences of the record industry's failure to act quickly and provide a compelling legal downloading alternative, the movie business is in danger of repeating the same mistakes. Sony first tested the technology for its Movielink online movie store in 2000. But according to Stringer, it took two years of laborious negotiations to get four other studios to sign on as partners. Even today, Fox and DreamWorks don't license their movies to the service. Movlielink still only has 450 movies available to download; and once viewers begin watching, their access to the movie expires in 24 hours. (you reading owd3??)
"We believe those constraints are too restrictive," says Sony's Landau. "But this is a partnership, and some of our partners believe in restricting our service."
Why are media companies so resistant to change, especially when compared to their technology brethren? One obvious answer: Tech companies are entrepreneurial. They live and die by the success of new inventions. Hollywood's main concern is content, and in recent years it has pursued a deeply conservative content-creation strategy, churning out movie franchises largely based on comic books, remakes and sequels.
When it comes to new technology, change is an especially scary proposition, because no one can safely predict whether a new product will save or destroy your business. The Internet nearly wrecked the music industry. But home video recorders, which the studios fought tooth and nail when they first appeared in the 1970s, turned out to be a huge boon, creating a new profit stream for the movie business.
"The battle that the studios lost actually created the business mechanism that can help them deal with the Internet," explains William Morris agent Marc Geiger, a co-founder of Artist Direct, an entertainment company that serves as a one-stop commerce outlet for music fans. "They have seven or eight different ways for a consumer to watch a movie, depending on their habits and the price they're willing to pay, from theaters and DVDs to HBO and pay-per-view. And it's all because movies are essentially already distributed digitally. I go home at night, call up a movie and store it in a hard drive -- it's called TiVo -- and I'm doing exactly what the music business is screaming about, except I'm doing it legally and paying for it."
The studios have other advantages besides flexible ways to sell and price their product. The same consumers who feel gouged by record company CD prices have fewer complaints about the value of movies and DVDs.
"The music business was charging their best customers higher prices for CDs, even though it was something that cost less to manufacture (than the vinyl LP that preceded it)," says Warner's Meyer. "There was also no way for a customer to get what they wanted -- one or two songs -- without paying full price for it. We've gone the other direction, putting more value into our DVDs while charging less for them."
Both Valenti and Chernin cite research findings that in the United States alone anywhere from 350,000 to 750,000 copies of movies are illegally downloaded every day. Those numbers sound awfully jaw-dropping, but it raises the question that if all that downloading is going on, how is it possible that DVD sales are rocketing through the roof? Put simply: If consumers are buying movies after seeing them on the Web for free, is that piracy or free promotion?
This piracy vs. promotion divide was a key ingredient in the recent Oscar-screener showdown, which found studio art-house divisions arguing that academy members should have unlimited access to DVDs, while their parent companies fought against any widespread distribution. And no wonder: The Oscars have almost zero box-office impact on a Big Media blockbuster such as "Lord of the Rings," which is a prime piracy target. But the Oscars mean everything to art-house films such as "American Splendor" or "In America," which are largely ignored by pirates but depend on Oscar nominations to reach a broader audience.
Even within the same studio, there are often conflicting strategies. Fox was a big proponent of the Oscar-screener ban, worried that DVDs of its big holiday release, "Master and Commander," would fall into the hands of pirates. But when Fox TV's new teen drama "The O.C." needed to make a splash with young TV viewers, the network sent out 15,000 DVDs of an early cut of the show's first episode to readers of Teen People and Teen Vogue. No one worried about piracy because the promotional value of seeing a new show outweighed the loss of control in how the program was passed around by fans.
In part because of piracy concerns, Warners last week released "The Matrix Revolutions" on the same day, even at the same hour, in every major global market. Warners chief Meyer predicts that "there is a day coming when, to properly protect movies from piracy, we'll leverage off the original theatrical marketing campaign and release movies any way the consumer wants it -- on his computer, on his TV or at Wal-Mart -- all at the same time."
Even in this era of sweeping technological change, one immutable law remains: The customer is always right. The record industry has been staggered because it was two steps behind its audience, which is bad enough when you're promoting a new song, even worse when you're trying to build a new business. The movie industry realizes it can't afford to be slow off the mark. As Chernin put it in a recent speech: "How do you create a new economic model faster than the old ones are being destroyed?"
If history is any judge, Hollywood will have to take some big risks to discover the answer.
Internet download is sheer music to retailers
By Robert Gottliebsen
• Video commentary
November 10, 2003
THE world music industry is humming over the proposed merger of Sony and Bertelsmann, but that's a side play compared with the really big weekend development in global music – the world's biggest music retailer, Wal-Mart of the US, plans to market music via a download from the internet.
Wal-Mart is responsible for 14 per cent of the world's music sales, so this switch means the internet is going to lead the distribution of music for the next decade.
In Australia, the biggest music retailer is Sanity. Founder Brett Blundy has come to the same conclusion as Wal-Mart and, along with other Australian music retailers HMV and Chaos, will brand the wholesale internet music service of Australia's biggest internet music distributor, Destra Corp.
These three retailers will be marketing 100,000 titles through their stores for the Christmas trade. Never before have they had such an array of music. Destra also has its own music site, MP3.
The nation's department stores, which have traditionally been large music retailers, have been caught flat-footed but will catch up in time.
Meanwhile, just as DVD sales of old movies have boosted film houses, so will the net change the revenue mix of the four major music companies – Japan's Sony, Germany's Bertelsmann, Britain's EMI and Time Warner of the US.
Their most valuable asset will be their libraries of music, which until now have been lying dormant and not producing revenue. But much of their production and distribution clout will vanish.
They will become massive marketing organisations taking their artists not only into music but into concerts and sponsorships.
However, the proposed mergers of Sony and Bertelsmann and between EMI and Warner will create very large organisations with huge redundancies. And many of the people retrenched will start their own music publishing businesses as the barriers to entry will be much lower.
Music distribution has moved from records to tapes to CDs. The first stage of the internet change will involve downloading music from the internet on to a CD. Later music will come directly from the internet into the home.
The big music companies opposed internet distribution vigorously because often they didn't have the internet rights to the artists. But in the past 12 months falling CD sales have forced them to act.
Internet piracy was caused partly because the big music houses had no extensive service that enabled the music to be downloaded legally.
Destra's success in distributing music over the internet to radio stations helped convince the majors that a new internet strategy was feasible.
Destra's founder, 29-year-old Domenic Carosa, raised $16 million in March 2000 to launch internet music in Australia. He was 3½ years ahead of his time, but he survived by moving into the hosting business.
Last year, he established MusicPoint as a joint venture between Destra's 80 per cent owned subsidiary Wired Entertainment and RCS Inc, the world's largest broadcast software company, to distribute new music releases to Australian radio stations.
The success of the venture means that it will be launched in key global markets early next year. Destra recently raised $1.3 million to expand.
Meanwhile, the internet is already changing the way music is being distributed. Kylie Minogue's latest single is being released first on the internet. And a new Elvis Presley collection is to be marketed only on the net.
Global music distribution is for now confined to countries and regions. Americans cannot download from Sanity, Chaos, HMV or Destra's MP3 site because they have been configured to prevent deals outside the country of origin. And Australians cannot download from US sites.
While it's possible that US giants will set up in Australia in competition with Destra and other locals, at the moment they are fully extended trying to service the changes in their home market. Meanwhile, Destra has signed up the major retailers to gain economies of scale.
Robert Gottliebsen writes for The Australian and hosts Business Daily on ABC Asia Pacific TV.
gottliebsenr@theaustralian
ITunes Forces Windows Users to Choose
Apple's program renders Musicmatch's Jukebox unusable.
Liane Cassavoy, PCWorld.com
Friday, November 07, 2003
Windows users have embraced Apple's expanded ITunes service, but the new software and music store apparently cause a conflict for some IPod users. Users of Windows-based IPods who download and install Apple's new software have discovered it disables their Musicmatch Jukebox application, which ships with Windows-based IPods. Musicmatch has notified customers of the problem, calling it a "serious software conflict" in an e-mail earlier this week.
"Apple ITunes for Windows prevents Musicmatch Jukebox from working with the IPod by deleting critical files used by Musicmatch. If you install ITunes, you will not be given a choice between Musicmatch Jukebox and ITunes--Apple makes this choice for you," the e-mail message says.
User Feedback
Musicmatch decided to send the e-mail after getting complaints from some customers.
"We weren't aware of the conflict until we began receiving questions from our customers," says Jen Roberts, Musicmatch's director of corporate communications. "Our customers started asking us why their Jukebox application wasn't working after they installed ITunes for Windows."
"We felt it was important to let our customers know that they have a choice," she says. That is, they can use Musicmatch to access and manage downloads from other online services, or switch entirely to Apple's ITunes software and service.
Because IPod for Windows shipped before ITunes supported Windows, the player bundles Musicmatch software.
Apple never alerted Musicmatch to the conflict between the two applications, Roberts says. "We don't know why ITunes deletes these files, and why we were never notified about the problem. You'd have to ask Apple why."
Apple representatives declined repeated requests to comment for this report, not even acknowledging the problem.
Windows Users Warned
When a Windows user downloads ITunes, the program warns that they will no longer be able to use Musicmatch's software to manage the IPod. The installation screen reads: "Important: After installing iTunes 4.1 for Windows, you'll only be able to transfer music to your iPod using iTunes. To transfer music from MusicMatch Jukebox or Audible Manager to your iPod, you'll need to first import the music into iTunes. For more information, search iTunes and Music Store Help."
IPods for Mac OS have always shipped with a version of Apple's ITunes software. Apple's ITunes music store (which is accessible through the ITunes software application) was launched for Mac users in April.
The Windows version of the application and the music store were released in October, and have proven very popular. More than a million songs were downloaded in its first three days.
IPods designed for Windows-based PCs have been available since August 2002. All of those devices ship with a version of Musicmatch's Jukebox software for transferring music from the PC to the player. Musicmatch launched its own downloads service in September. Like the ITunes store, Musicmatch's service offers individual song downloads for 99 cents.
"Once [Apple] announced plans for ITunes for Windows, we knew we'd become competitors. We were partners and now we're competitors," Roberts says. Musicmatch does have an ongoing contract to ship its software with IPods for Windows, but the company will not disclose the length or terms of that contract.
Competing Formats
Musicmatch Jukebox supports digital audio in several formats, including Windows Media, MP3, .wav, and MP2, and its download service delivers songs in the WMA format. The ITunes music store delivers songs in a secure version of the AAC format. Apple created this version, and only Apple supports it, Roberts says. ITunes transfers songs to the IPod in that format, but Jukebox transfers them to the IPod in MP3 format, because Apple won't license its format to Musicmatch, she says.
The ITunes application will import music from other sources, including your Jukebox music library and your CD collection, and convert the songs to Apple's format for uploading onto the IPod. But you cannot purchase music from the ITunes music store and then upload it into your IPod using any application other than ITunes.
"If you want to use ITunes to purchase music, then you'd want to use the ITunes software to manage your IPod," Roberts says.
Migrate Back to Musicmatch
It is possible to uninstall ITunes for Windows and continue using the Musicmatch software to manage your IPod. Musicmatch offers the following instructions to do so:
Disconnect the IPod from your computer if it is still connected.
Double-click on 'My Computer'.
Double-click on 'Control Panel'.
Open 'Add or Remove Programs'.
Select and uninstall 'iTunes'.
Select and uninstall the 'iPod for Windows' item.
Select and uninstall the 'Musicmatch iPod Plugin' item.
Select and uninstall the 'iPod System Software Update' or any other IPod related-items that might be listed.
Select and uninstall 'Musicmatch Jukebox'.
Close the 'Add or Remove Programs' control panel.
Restart your computer.
Delete the contents of the iPod directory by dragging the files to the Recycle Bin and then emptying the Recycle Bin.
Navigate to the '\program files\Musicmatch\Musicmatch Jukebox\' folder.
Delete the files, but not the folder, in the Musicmatch Jukebox folder.
Reinstall Musicmatch Jukebox from the installation CD that came with your IPod or download the IPod software from Musicmatch.com.
When finished, reboot your computer.
When the computer finishes rebooting, connect the IPod to your system.
Open Musicmatch Jukebox.
Roxio CEO Chris Gorog Tells TechNewsWorld 'We Will Take Market Share from Apple'
By Jay Lyman
TechNewsWorld
November 7, 2003
"In our first week, we did 36 percent of Apple's business, which we think is an extraordinary start for us," Roxio chairman and chief executive officer Chris Gorog told TechNewsWorld.
In a technology industry version of the battle of the bands, Apple has come out swinging against a reborn, legitimate Napster, boasting that the Apple iTunes music store has sold five times the number of songs Napster did in the challenger's first week of business.
The original, free Napster song-swapping service sparked the peer-to-peer (P2P) file-trading movement, drawing around 60 million users before being shut down by legal attack.
While most of those Napster users moved onto alternative free services such as Kazaa , LimeWire and others, Apple has managed to capture many Windows users in addition to the expected Mac users. Windows users legally downloaded one million songs in the first three days that iTunes was offered for Windows.
Despite a long list of other Windows competitors, analysts believe name recognition and the business model will put Napster -- now owned by Roxio -- and iTunes in a head-to-head battle for dominance. Touting 80 percent of the market for legal music downloads, Apple fired the first shot this week. "During Napster's first week of operation, the iTunes Music Store sold five times as many songs as Napster did -- 1.5 million versus 300,000," said Apple chief executive Steve Jobs in a statement.
Not to be upstaged by Apple, Roxio chairman and chief executive officer Chris Gorog challenged Apple's statistics and told TechNewsWorld his company will be chipping away at Apple's market share with a powerful marketing campaign already underway.
"We expect as soon as we get the word out to consumers that Napster is back, it will significantly impact our growth," Gorog said in an exclusive interview with TechNewsWorld. "We would also expect to be taking away market share from Apple on a weekly basis."
Boasting more than 17 million 99-cent-song purchases since its launch in April, iTunes had more than 80 percent share of the legal download business last week, Apple said, referring to Nielsen SoundScan research.
Napster, which announced a deal with Penn State University to deliver its premium service to students there, called its first week's results "strong" at 300,000 songs sold. However, Apple broke out the "five times" claim with a press release on its iTunes progress the same day.
Yankee Group senior analyst Mike Goodman told TechNewsWorld that Napster's name recognition and Apple's hardware-driving business model with iPod are likely to propel the two into a fight for dominance of the legitimate download market.
Apple's To Oranges
In response to Apple's belittling of its song sales, Roxio's Gorog questioned Apple's figures from Nielsen SoundScan, telling TechNewsWorld they did not include Napster's results.
Gorog said Apple's claim of 80 percent market share was reduced to 62 percent when Napster's 23 percent was considered. Gorog, who also questioned how Apple could have had 1.5 million song downloads when SoundScan reported a total of 827,000 single downloads in the same period, said he did not know where Apple got the 1.5 million figure.
"In our first week, we did 36 percent of Apple's business, which we think is an extraordinary start for us," Gorog said, referring to Apple's "carpet bombing" advertising that is now being matched with television, print and Internet marketing for Napster.
Napster also reiterated it is one of the select services -- not counting MusicMatch -- to offer both a-la-carte downloads in addition to a US$10 monthly subscription for unlimited streaming CD-quality music. Napster fired back that the company had streamed or downloaded two million tracks to thousands of members since it launched last week.
"They're obviously comparing on the basis of downloads because they're not in the subscription business," Gorog told TechNewsWorld, referring to higher margins and profit from subscriptions. "It's Apple ignoring that aspect of our business because they're not able to compete with it."
Both services are very similar in offerings: 99-cent songs, $9.95 albums, celebrity playlists and either allowance or gift certificates and cards. But Apple was the first to show success with the single-song or a-la-carte model.
Goodman downplayed Napster's subscription business, contending that the same basic offering is available for free from MusicMatch with its jukebox software.
Nice for Napster
Still, Goodman was critical of Apple's public attention to Napster, indicating that the move lends credibility to the new iTunes competitor.
"Why give legitimacy to Napster?" Goodman said. "What Apple is inherently doing is helping to build Napster's credibility -- just the fact that they're paying attention to them shows Apple has some concerns regarding them."
Goodman blamed Apple's leading market position for what he viewed as a mistake, adding the Cupertino, California-based company is not used to being the front runner.
Five reasons not to buy an iPod
By Eliot Van Buskirk
Author of Burning Down the House
Senior editor, CNET Reviews
(November 5, 2003)
For the past year, the media has been clamoring about iPod killers on the horizon--new MP3 players with more features, longer battery life, and designs nearly as svelte as the iPod's. However, this oversimplifies the situation; in truth, while the iPod rocks, it's not now, nor has it ever been, perfect for everyone.
We too have run our fair share of iPod-centric headlines--for a good reason. With about 1.5 million units sold, the iPod is the most popular MP3 player in the world, and it still makes other players look and feel inelegant in comparison. Don't get me wrong; it's still our favorite overall MP3 player. Although everyone can think of reasons why they want an iPod, I've decided to use this column to list a few reasons why not to buy one.
Before you send me rants for putting down the iPod, please read the list, realize that we still love the iPod, and take a deep breath. If you still don't think there could be reasons to go with something else, feel free to e-mail me your comments.
1. Six-plus hours of battery life is not always enough.
Dell Digital Jukebox DJ (15GB)
Read the review
Check prices
If you regularly take long airplane flights, you'll find that the iPod's battery craps out before you reach your destination, leaving you to rely on the low-grade tunes pumped to the arm of your seat. If you need a long battery life from your MP3 player, go with the Dell Digital Jukebox DJ (15GB), which lasted almost 20 hours in our battery test--and it's less expensive than the iPod.
2. Jogging with a hard drive-based player is not cool.
iRiver iFP-395T (512MB)
iRiver iFP-390T (256MB)
iRiver iFP-380T (128MB)
iRiver iFP-340T (64MB)
The iPod and other high-capacity MP3 players use hard drives to store music. In order to extend battery life and avoid skipping, the hard drives turn on only every once in a while to fill up a flash-memory buffer, which itself has no potentially skipping, moving parts. The flash buffer, in turn, plays the music. If something jars a hard drive-based player at the precise moment when the hard drive is spinning to load the flash buffer, the player could skip. Some experts say that it's impossible to damage the drive in this way, but I'm not buying that--hard drives spin thousands of times per minute, and they have tiny, fragile parts. Instead, use a small flash player, such as something from the iRiver iFP-3xx line. They won't skip, the batteries last longer, and they're much lighter than the iPod.
3. The iPod is expensive.
As much as we love the iPod, it sure is expensive--especially when you consider that the nonreplacable battery will lose its resiliency in a few years. Although not nearly as glamorous as the iPod, MP3 CD players offer much more megabytes per dollar and can approximate the experience of using a hard drive-based player. Since each MP3 CD holds about 10 hours of music, you could carry 20 CD-Rs in a CD wallet and have about the same amount of music that fits on the 15GB iPod. Best of all, you can pick up a decent one (the iRiver ChromeX) for less than $60.
iRiver ChromeX iMP-150 (budget)
Check prices Philips Nike psa[cd8 (plays mini CD-Rs)
Check prices iRiver SlimX iMP-550 (high end)
Check prices
4. You want to make high-quality digital recordings.
Apple recently announced the availability of a voice-recorder accessory for the iPod, but there's still no way to use the device to record high-quality audio. DJs who want to record their sets, people who want to encode their vinyl or cassette collections to MP3, or musicians who are looking for a replacement for their DAT recorder need this feature. Luckily for them, two new iPod competitors offer this option; compare them below.
Samsung Napster YP-910GS (20GB)
Check prices iRiver iHP-120 (20GB)
Check prices
5. You want a choice in online music stores.
Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy the Apple iTunes Music Store; its AAC-encoded files sound great, the selection is decent, and it's easy to use. But I don't like feeling hemmed in. Some other MP3 players let you choose between BuyMusic, Musicmatch, and Napster, all of which use Microsoft's secure WMA files. Those files are supported by a wide range of MP3 players but not the iPod. If you want a greater degree of choice in music services, go with an MP3 player from one of the following companies.
Rio
Creative
Samsung
Dell
Of course, if you don't care about low battery life, aren't fond of jogging, have ample disposable income, don't need to record/encode music portably, and want to purchase music downloads only from the iTunes Music Store, then the iPod is the best the way to go. While not ideal for some niche activities, it's still hands down the best-designed MP3 player in the world.
Eliot Van Buskirk is senior editor for CNET Reviews and author of a new book called Burning Down the House: Ripping, Recording, Remixing, and More!
Apple: ITunes Outsold Napster 5-1 in 1st Week
Thu Nov 6, 6:17 PM ET
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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc. said on Thursday that its iTunes online music store sold five times more songs than rival Napster (news - web sites)'s service in its first week of operation.
Cupertino, California-based Apple said that consumers purchased and downloaded 1.5 million songs from its iTunes Music Store during the same period that Napster reported selling 300,000 songs.
Napster, the song-swap pioneer that revolutionized online music and turned the music industry upside down, was bought last year by Roxio Inc. in a bankruptcy auction. The revamped service opened for business Oct. 29.
The company also cited data from Nielsen SoundScan showing that Apple's online music store had more than 80 percent of the market for legally purchased downloads last week.
More than 17 million songs have been bought on iTunes at 99 cents each since the popular service was introduced in April.
The iTunes software, which has the music store integrated into it, is now available for both Macintosh (news - web sites) computers and those who use Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system.
Apple Claims Music Crown
CEO Jobs dismisses competitors, including Wintel ventures.
Macworld U.K. Staff
Thursday, November 06, 2003
LONDON -- Apple Computer has become "the Microsoft of music stores," quipped Steve Jobs, the company's chief executive officer, on Wednesday night while speaking to analysts.
"There's no reason to make IPod work with other [online music] services right now. It's the number one-selling MP3 player in the world, even compared to little cheap devices like flash MP3 players that hold seven songs," Jobs said.
"ITunes Music Store works with the number one music player around; conversely, the IPod works with the number one music store," he added.
He confirmed that SoundScan, which assesses digital downloads, declared that ITunes Music Store took 80 percent of the market for legally downloaded music last week. "Why should IPods work with another music store when they work with the Microsoft of music stores?" he asked.
ITunes Music Store exists primarily to help Apple sell IPods, a strategy that has proved succesful so far. But how financially rewarding is the ITunes Music Store itself?
"With ITunes Music Store, most of the money goes to the music labels," Jobs said. "We'd like to break even, make a little money. That's why, when I look at Roxio Napster and all these other companies, I think they're spending money on a business that can't make money."
He added, "I'm kind of puzzled why these companies want to get into a business like this. It makes no sense."
Lucrative Music
Jobs is buoyant about progress so far. "Right now, we're number one in units and revenue. We're investing a lot of money in that, and we have some great stuff coming out over the next time frames," Jobs said.
"I'd rather spend engineering dollars on enhancing the IPod and Music Store, as we did in recent weeks," but Apple is prepared for a change in market conditions, he said.
With new manufacturers--such as Dell--preparing to release MP3 players in combination with other third-party music stores (in Dell's case, Apple's former partner, Musicmatch), analysts asked for Apple's response.
"Apple is as good or better a manufacturer as Dell," Jobs said. "We beat them every quarter on operational metrics. We aren't worried on being beaten on manufacturing or operational efficiency. We can be as aggressive as the next guy, and more aggressive than most. And we think the IPod is the gold-star product out there. We've been competing against other products since IPod came out."
No Intel Inside
Jobs also revisited an earlier discussion about the viability of running Macintosh software on Intel chips.
Mac OS X could "easily run" on Intel chips, but the company has "little interest" in changing processors, Jobs said.
"It's perfectly technically feasible to port Panther to any processor," he said. However, Apple is happy with IBM's PowerPC 970 processors, which the company feels are "quite competitive."
"We don't see a compelling need to switch processor families," Jobs said. "We have all the options in the world, but the PowerPC road map still looks very strong."
In a recent interview, former Apple CEO John Sculley said Apple should have switched to Intel architecture in the late 1980s but opted for Motorola RISC chips instead.
Longhorn Broadside
Jobs was critical of Microsoft's Media Center products, which combine TV and video-recording facilities with common PC features, based on Windows XP. Dismissing consumer need for such products as a "small audience," Jobs added, "Generally what [people] want to view on television has to do with turning their mind off." He observed that recording video on a computer is processor-intensive, so is best left to a device dedicated to such tasks.
Jobs also fired another salvo at Microsoft, pointing out that Apple is out-innovating the rival software company, which will not release its next operating system upgrade, Longhorn, until 2005 or 2006. "They hope to be in 2006 where we were with Jaguar," he said.
Apple remains committed to delivering the best system to its customers, he said. "We're going to have a few more releases by then."
Stalemate on digital content?
By John Borland
CNET News.com
November 6, 2003, 1:00 PM PT
Travis Kalanick has a problem with the emerging world of legal online music services.
As the head of peer-to-peer content distribution company Red Swoosh, he was naturally curious to try Roxio's new Napster download service when it launched last week. Trouble is, Napster uses Microsoft technology that doesn't work with his iPod, the best-selling portable music player produced by Apple Computer.
"People don't like that," Kalanik said. "Until these services have standards and they're compatible, and you can play what ever you have on whatever device you have, people are going to resort to the services that do give them that. And those are illicit."
Incompatible anticopying technologies known as digital rights management (DRM) are being applied to everything from music files to Microsoft Word documents, and the lack of rules that can make these schemes work together is increasingly prompting calls for a standards revolution.
The problem, critics say, is that companies can all too easily turn DRM into a powerful tool for locking customers into proprietary technologies. For example, files purchased through Apple's iTunes music store won't work with portable music players other than the company's own iPod device.
More broadly, some worry that Microsoft's new Office suite of software, and its ability to prevent unauthorized distribution of e-mail or Word files, will lock the business world even more deeply into using Office, since other programs might not be able to read the locked files. A recent report from a panel of security experts warned against this trend, saying that using content protection to tie users to Microsoft Office and Windows could create damaging security risks.
Indeed, Microsoft's rise in a number of different copy-protection arenas worries critics. They're calling for cross-industry agreements that will let multiple companies create and produce standard ways of protecting content, in much the same way that multiple companies can create Web browsers or e-mail programs that send secure communications to each other.
"Unless users can access content without all the hassle of dealing with different digital rights management systems, DRM is a nonstarter," said Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) founder Leonardo Chiariglione, who recently created a new international group focused on content protection issues. "The alternative is a digital media stalemate, where nothing moves."
Working together
A host of traditional standards bodies already exist to handle individual pieces of this task. Chiariglione's MPEG organization is working slowly on rules for multimedia. The Open Mobile Alliance is working on rules for mobile phones. The TV Anytime group is working on content-protection standards for consumer storage devices such as TiVo.
Microsoft says it's working with all of these groups. Despite being a market leader in several areas, it is actively pursuing digital rights management standards, its executives say.
Rather than a specific standard for the locks themselves, standards need to focus on interoperability, so that when a file goes from one device to another--say, a cell phone to a personal computer--both devices know how to read the file and protect it from unauthorized use. That kind of interoperability is Microsoft's goal in all the groups it's working with, the company says.
"There is no one silver bullet," said Andrew Moss, director of technical policy for Microsoft's Windows division. "If we want to ensure that information can flow, and can be protected properly as it flows, the world needs to come up with mechanisms for trust and authentication as that information gets handed off."
But Chiariglione isn't the only one that feels traditional standards bodies aren't moving fast enough. And even Moss concedes that there is no standards body looking at rights management for corporate documents, even though that might be "desirable."
As a result, Sun Microsystems has become one of the latest, largest entities to mount a cry for interoperability in digital rights management--and it's taking matters into its own hands.
Sun is looking at its experience with the Liberty Alliance, a group formed several years ago to provide an alternative to Microsoft's Passport online identity services. Now the company wants to create a similar cross-industry alliance to create standards ensuring that authorized data can be swapped across different companies' digital rights management tools, whether the subject is the latest "Matrix" movie or a top-secret corporate memo.
"The notion there is that you don't have to be beholden to a single vendor," said John Fowler, Sun's chief technology officer for software. "I think it is incumbent on us to get something started. It's just a matter of getting (the effort) going."
Paved with good intentions
None of these ideas is wholly new. Other companies and other organizations have long since tried and failed to create momentum behind content protection standards.
In the music realm, the Secure Digital Music Initiative, sponsored by the big record labels, collapsed under the weight of disagreements between consumer electronics companies, labels and computer makers.
Wary of Microsoft's early digital rights moves, RealNetworks tried to pull together an open-standards drive beginning in mid-2001, but never gained serious traction.
Analysts say that the ambitious cross-media efforts launched by Sun and by Chiariglione could well meet the same fate.
"I'm not convinced that an open DRM standard is possible across everything," said IDC analyst Joshua Duhl. "You've got a lot of constituents with a lot of agendas, and in some sense, no demand for the use of it...I think standards are coming, but they're coming in different ways in different markets."
Music's Zero-Sum Merger
Peter Kafka, 11.06.03, 4:27 PM ET
NEW YORK - How do you fix a sick business in an ailing industry? The answer, according to Sony and Bertelsmann: a merger.
The two media giants today announced plans to combine their two music companies into a 50/50 joint venture, to be called Sony BMG. The letter of intent lays out a structure featuring an equal number of board members from each company, which will be run by Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) music boss Andrew Lack and chaired by BMG boss Rolf Schmidt-Holtz.
In theory, the merged company will benefit from reduced overhead and bigger market share, and may also prevent rivals EMI Group (otc: EMIPY - news - people ) and Time Warner's (nyse: TWX - news - people ) Warner Music Group from consummating a deal of their own. Conventional wisdom is that European Union regulators may sign off on a Sony/BMG deal, which would reduce the number of major record companies from five to four, but might balk at a second deal to shrink the industry even further. The two companies would hang on to their respective publishing, manufacturing and distribution businesses.
"We are optimistic that a partnership between Sony Music and BMG would provide significant opportunities to both companies--and invigorate the music marketplace overall," Lack told Sony employees in a companywide memo.
But industry skeptics wonder how much better a combined company will be in tackling the problems that beset the entire music business: declining sales; difficulty developing new acts who can last more than album; and piracy, both digital and traditional. "I think these are pathetic Band-Aids that don't do anything in the long run," says an attorney who represents artists signed to both labels.
How effective a Band-Aid will it be in the short run? The merger is predicated in part on cost cutting, but all five major music companies have already been shrinking their headcounts through the industry's three-year slump: BMG cut staff in the fall of 2001, though the company subsequently bought Zomba, home of 'N Sync and Britney Spears, last year.
Sony reduced its head count by 10%, to 9,000 employees, this year after bringing on Lack from NBC. Howard Stringer, who heads up Sony's U.S. arm and its entertainment group, plans to trims another 1,700 jobs in the next three years from his music and movie divisions.
"The people at Sony are maxed out. They're working their a---- off," says a manager who represents one of Sony's music acts. "At what point does working you're a-- off become burning out?"
To date, however, the cuts have improved Sony's margins. This week the company announced that while Sony's worldwide music revenue of $5.268 billion for fiscal 2003 would continue to decline over the next year, it expected adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to improve slightly from last year's $454 million.
Another vote in favor of the merger: the potential benefit of pairing Sony's Lack, a hands-on, budget-conscious manager, with BMG's Clive Davis, a legendary impresario respected for his ability to pick hit songs and develop promising artists. This week, BMG owns five of the top 10 albums in the U.S., bolstered by acts like American Idol runner-up Clay Aiken and veteran crooner Rod Stewart, both of whom worked under Davis' eye.
A successful deal could also bolster Sony's plans to launch its planned digital music download service, referred to internally as Music Box, in April. This week Stringer told analysts and reporters that the service was designed as an answer to Apple Computer's (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) successful iTunes download service, which has spurred sales of 1.3 million iPod players.
Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs "is not making much money off of our music, but he's making a lot of money off iPod," Stringer said, arguing that the Sony service would benefit both the company's hardware sales and its content sales.
Bertelsmann AG and Sony Corporation Agree to Form Joint Music Group
Thursday November 6, 12:51 pm ET
NEW YORK, and GUETERSLOH, Germany, Nov. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The international media and entertainment companies Bertelsmann AG and Sony Corporation today announced that they have signed a non-binding letter of intent to form a jointly owned recorded music company to be called Sony BMG. The company will be 50% owned by Bertelsmann and 50% owned by Sony.
The joint venture of BMG and Sony Music Entertainment will combine their recorded music businesses. The new company would not include the companies' music publishing, physical distribution and manufacturing businesses.
Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, currently Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BMG, would serve as Chairman of the Board of the new joint venture. The Board of Directors of the new company would be made up of an equal number of representatives from Sony and Bertelsmann.
Andrew Lack, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sony Music Entertainment, would be Chief Executive Officer. The newly formed joint venture would include senior executives from both music groups.
Consummation of the transaction remains subject to a number of conditions, including approvals of the regulatory authorities in the US and the European Union.
OT Designing an Identity to Make a Brand Fly
By MOTOKO RICH
Published: November 6, 2003
LL-LEATHER seats. Extra legroom. Live satellite television at your seat. Minimalist, whimsical flourishes on the sides of the planes, and oh yeah, low fares.
If you are thinking that sounds like JetBlue, the three-year-old upstart airline, who could blame you? But Song, the new low-fare service Delta Air Lines rolled out in April, is also trying to capture a youthful market by selling style as much as service.
Officials at Song insist, of course, that their airline is not simply a JetBlue knockoff. They have added an extra inch of legroom and will offer amenities like video games, MP3 playlists and pay-per-view movies. In an effort at one-upmanship, they will sell entrees like "rock and roll veggie sushi" and "shaved turkey on focaccia," for about $8.
So, aside from the traditional billboards and print ads, how to communicate the message? Taking a page from Prada and Apple Computer, the airline is opening a store in SoHo for six weeks starting tomorrow.
Featuring sleek electronics and installation art, Song, whose biggest market is New York, with 35 daily flights, is clearly courting what they hope will be a glamorous following. "We want people to say, `An airline is doing that? I thought it was a clothing store' or `I thought it was a gallery,' " said Stacy Geagan, Song's communications director.
The airline is giving an invitation-only party at the store tonight, where, publicists promised, Grace Jones would serve as D.J. and Moby, Drew Barrymore and her boyfriend, Fabrizio Moretti of the Strokes, would drop by.
Those not lucky enough to make it tonight can stop in Thursdays through Sundays (98 Prince Street, between Mercer and Greene; 646-613-0203). The store will display airline seats, X-Box game systems, a Microsoft 2004 flight simulator and airplane windows stocked with retail items from Kate Spade (who is designing uniforms for the flight attendants) and Flight 001, a boutique travel store. Customers can also make flight reservations at the store.
Michael Rock, a partner at 2x4, a firm that helped design the Prada store in SoHo, said Song was just following the current trend of using retail space to sell an image. "You don't really change the function of the thing itself," Mr. Rock said, "but you change the perception of the function of the thing and you differentiate the surface of it."
He added that by placing the store within a block of the Prada and Apple stores, the airline is "equating the value of Song with these other things nearby and the kind of people you expect to find in SoHo."
The store has a cafe that offers a sampling of the nouveau airline food, created by Michel Nischan, a consultant who is the author of "Taste Pure and Simple: Irresistible Recipes for Good Food and Good Health."
Alex Calderwood, a creative director at Neverstop, which designed the store, said, "You are serving airline food in SoHo. That communicates a sense of confidence and spirit."
Julie Lasky, the editor in chief of I.D. magazine, said that Song was trying to evoke a range of emotions, rather than simply selling its product. "It's taking people out of the notion of an airplane and linking them to a sense of adventure, comfort and things that have become a general experience," she said. Design features like the Kate Spade uniforms, she said, would help Song to establish itself as "simple and minimal and modern."
In an attempt to associate itself with the SoHo art scene, the airline commissioned Howard Goldkrand, an electronic-media artist, to produce streaming video of skies running continuously past a panel that looks like the side of a plane.
And in what is perhaps a rather odd choice for an airline, the store's designers had Ed Tannenbaum, an artist, develop an interactive display in which visitors see their likenesses projected onto a stack of video screens with watery imagery. If you wave your arm, for example, the screens ripple and bubble.
While that might bring to mind emergency water landings, Mr. Calderwood said it is meant to represent something more metaphorical. "It reflects the purity of flying," he said.
Fundamentally, the store is about using stylish design and entertainment to introduce the airline to people who might not have heard of it.
"You don't have to know about Song, you can happen upon Song," Ms. Geagan said.
Officials at JetBlue said they question whether people would go out of their way to investigate a new brand. With Apple's store, for example, "people already have a fondness for Apple," said Gareth Edmondson-Jones, a spokesman for JetBlue. "It was such an icon of its time. I don't know that Song is a) known enough or b) desirable enough to attract people. I think it's just putting the cart before the horse."
JetBlue's success may be part of the reason Song is so eager to copy the airline. JetBlue recently reported third-quarter earnings that were double the year-earlier period's.
Masamichi Udagawa, a principal of Antenna Design, a Manhattan-based firm that created check-in kiosks for JetBlue, said he preferred JetBlue's recent plan to build a modern terminal behind the historic Eero Saarinen Trans World Airlines terminal at Kennedy Airport, in which it will install electronic kiosks. He said the move showed JetBlue "merging the brand with that established image of glorious air travel of the past," which would add more heft to JetBlue's design consciousness than would a store in SoHo.
The Song store, Mr. Udagawa said, is unlikely to conceal the fact that the airline is less original than it might like people to think. "In general, it's great that companies are more design-conscious," he said. "But copying other people's design is an absolute no-no," he said.
"I know it's a competitive business," he added, "but the strength of design is to come up with an original idea, not just copy someone else's good idea."
Sony released first specs and pics of PSP
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Sony revealed some details about its upcoming handheld game machine, dubbed as PSP or Playstation Portable.
Current design version, which may or may not look like the final version due by the end of the year 2004, uses storage media dubbed as UMD (Universal Media Disc) which holds appx. 1.8GB of storage space. Each disc will carry a region coding, copy-protection mechanism and each disc will have its own individual identification number as well.
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/4661.cfm
i.afterdawn.com/news/sony_psp.jpg
(This picture is definitely worth a look imo)
Device will include two processors, both based on MIPS R4000 core. PSP will support Dolby 7.1 surround audio, AAC, MP3 and Sony's own ATRAC3 as audio formats and will also support MPEG-4 H.264 for video.
Source: TheRegister
Written by dRD (11/5/2003 20:40)
2004 International CES TechZones Highlight Content Storage, Digital Imaging, Broadband in Largest CES Ever
2004 International CES
Arlington, Va, United States, Thursday, November 06, 2003 -- (business2media)
North America's Largest Tradeshow of Any Kind Showcases the World's Hottest Consumer Technology In 1.3 Million Square Feet of Exhibit Space
It's official: The 2004 International CES is the largest in history and the line-up of the show's new TechZones houses some of the hottest technology and trends including digital imaging, content storage, broadband, portable power and telematics. The 2004 International CES, the world's largest annual tradeshow for consumer technology, runs January 8-11 in Las Vegas, Nev.
"The International CES is truly the must-attend event for anyone in the world involved in consumer technology," said Karen Chupka, vice president of events and conferences for the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the producer of CES. "In addition to the world renowned line-up of international technology visionaries speaking during the show, some of the most popular, fastest growing products and technology in the world will be featured in more than 20 TechZones displayed across the largest CES show floor in history."
Whether attendees are looking at home networking, entertainment, broadband or mobile electronics, chances are they can hone in on one of several CES TechZones showcasing the latest products and technology to hit the worldwide market.
Digital Imaging
Digital imaging continues to flourish at the 2004 International CES. For those looking for the latest in digital imaging products and technology, check out the Flash Forward: Bringing Digital Imaging into Focus TechZone located in South Hall 4.
Wireless
The International CES is the premiere tradeshow for the wireless technology industry. The line-up of wireless TechZones includes the Bluetooth and Mobile Computing/Tablet PC TechZones.
Content Storage
Consumers demand content storage, CES has recognized that demand with an increased focus on content storage products and technology. Top content storage TechZones include the Digital Content Storage, Memory Stick, RWPPI, DVD-RW Alliance, USB, DVD-RAM Promotions Group and SD Card TechZones.
Mobile Electronics
The 2003 International CES houses the country's largest mobile technology tradeshow. The line-up of mobile technology TechZones truly reflects CES' impact on the mobile marketplace. Top mobile technology TechZones include the CES/NOPI Showcase and the Telematics/Digital Car Showroom.
Home Networking and Entertainment
Whether it's beefing up a home theater system or building the ultimate connected home, CES is the premier venue for connected home technology and entertainment. The line-up of 2004 TechZones for this $15 billion industry include Broadband to the Home, Connected Home Entertainment, MP3, Home Plug Power Alliance, UpnP Implementers Corp. and the TechHome TechZones.
Emerging Technologies
The new Launch TechZone highlights emerging technologies and features the MIT Media Lab's new SIMPLICITY research program, focused on developing ways to simplify the many technologies around us. The program will be presented live for the first time at the 2004 International CES. Since opening its doors in 1985, the MIT Media Lab has pioneered new approaches to bringing digital technologies into our lives, and it will be the centerpiece of the Launch TechZone.
For a complete list of TechZones updated regularly, go to www.cesweb.org/techzones. For more news on CES before, during and after the show, visit www.CESweb.org, the interactive source for CES information.
Note to Journalists: Journalists are encouraged to arrive in Las Vegas by Tuesday, January 6th to take advantage of all the CES press activities, conferences and events on Tuesday and Wednesday, January 6-7.
About CEA:
The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) is the preeminent trade association promoting growth in the consumer technology industry through technology policy, events, research, promotion and the fostering of business and strategic relationships. CEA represents more than 1,200 corporate members involved in the design, development, manufacturing, distribution and integration of audio, video, mobile electronics, wireless and landline communications, information technology, home networking, multimedia and accessory products, as well as related services that are sold through consumer channels. Combined, CEA's members account for more than $85 billion in annual sales. CEA's resources are available online at www.CE.org, the definitive source for information about the consumer electronics industry.
UPCOMING EVENTS2003 Fall Electronic House Expo (EHX)November 11-13, 2003, Long Beach, Calif.2004 International CES - Defining Tomorrow's TechnologyJanuary 8-11, 2004, Las Vegas, NVCEA Winter Technology & Standards ForumFebruary 26 - 29, 2004, Aspen, CO2004 CEA Winter SummitFebruary 22 - 27, 2004, Fort Lauderdale, FLElectronic House Expo - SpringMarch 11 - 13, 2004, Orlando, FLCONNECTIONS(TM) 2004May 5 - 7, 2004, Dallas, TXConsumer Electronics CEO SummitJune 23 - 26, 2004, Huntington Beach, CA
CONTACT:
CEA
Lisa Fasold, 703-907-7669
lfasold@ce.org
http://www.CE.org
or
Brad Jones, 703-907-7060
bjones@ce.org
http://wwwCESweb.org
KEYWORDS: IT, TECHNOLOGY
http://www.asiawire.info
http://www.businesswire.com
Submit your press release at http://www.business2media.com
Apple says could move to Intel, but happy with IBM
By Ina Fried
CNET News.com
November 5, 2003, 5:14 PM PT
The latest version of the Mac OS X operating system could easily run on Intel chips, but Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs said on Wednesday that the company has little interest in changing processors.
"It's perfectly technically feasible to port Panther to any processor," Jobs said at a meeting with financial analysts. But Jobs said the company is happy with IBM's PowerPC family of chips and feels the performance is "quite competitive."
"Right now we don't see a compelling need to switch processor families," Jobs said. "We have all the options in the world, but the PowerPC road map looks very strong."
Asked about Apple's interest in selling Macs that could serve up the video recording abilities Microsoft offers with its Windows XP Media Center Edition, Jobs joked that Apple was instead focused on melding the computer with a toaster.
"I never get mine quite brown," said Phil Schiller, vice president of marketing. "We can do an up-sell for bagels."
Jobs said that he doesn't see such products creating a big market.
"We're not going to go that direction," Jobs said. "There is a small audience that likes this."
Jobs said there are several problems with the Media Center concept, in particular the wide divergence in the way people want to watch television as compared with how they use a computer. "Generally what they want to view on television has to do with turning their mind off," he said.
Jobs said that video recording is processor intensive and is best left to a device that is not doing other things such as playing games or running spreadsheets. "When I want to record 'The West Wing,' I want to make damn sure it records 'The West Wing,'" he said.
Separately, Jobs rebuffed the idea that the iTunes music store should work with MP3 players other than the iPod, or conversely, that Apple's iPod should work with other music download services.
"Why should we work with another music store when we are working with the Microsoft of music stores?" Jobs said. "I'd rather spend our engineering dollars on enhancing the iPod and the iTunes music store."
Asked about whether consumers care about 64-bit computing, Jobs said people don't pay attention to what type of chip they're using, they look at what it can do.
"Consumers don't care about 64-bit computing per se," Jobs said. At the same time, he said they will care a great deal if faster processors can speed the time it takes to encode a DVD, or if it is possible to make a clear picture out of what was once a blurry photo.
"It's mathematically possible to unblur that photo," Jobs said. "It's computationally ferocious--64-bit computing will one day possibly help that."
As for how the company can boost sales, Jobs said that while Apple will continue to woo Windows customers, it will be most focused on selling to existing Mac customers who have not upgraded recently, noting that there are a lot of professional customers with Power Mac G3 systems or early Power Mac G4s.
"It's a great time for our pro customers to upgrade," Jobs said. "That's the No. 1 thing we're focused on; that's the lowest-hanging fruit."
The company is also making money in new areas, such as its .Mac Internet service, which just went through its first renewal period, in which customers had to pay the full $99 price. Jobs pointed out that critics said Apple would never get customers to pay $99 after selling the first year at $49.
"Our renewal rate was 86 (percent) to 87 percent," Jobs said, adding that that is "unheard of, higher than almost anybody's. We've built ourselves the beginnings of a pretty good Internet services business."
Jobs also took a few shots at Microsoft, saying that Apple is out-innovating its larger rival, which has years of work ahead of it with Longhorn, the next version of Windows. "They're hoping to be in 2006 where we were with Jaguar," Jobs said, adding, "We're going to have a few more releases by then."
OT Linux Founder Okays DRM, Expects Irate Response
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By James Maguire
NewsFactor Network
April 25, 2003
"I also don't necessarily like DRM myself," Linus Torvalds says, "but I still ended up feeling the same: I'm an 'Oppenheimer,' and I refuse to play politics with Linux, and I think you can use Linux for whatever you want to...."
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In a move certain to create controversy within the open-source community, Linux founder Linus Torvalds has stated that digital rights management (DRM) is "perfectly okay with Linux."
DRM includes a number of lock technologies designed to ensure authentication and protect against unauthorized copying. Since one of the guiding ethics of open-source developers is unfettered freedom in the use of software, Torvalds was well aware that his posting would spark a negative reaction.
In his statement, posted on the "Linux-kernel" mailing list, he said he expected to get "flamed" extensively for his approval of DRM: "My asbestos underwear is firmly in place and extremely uncomfortable," he wrote.
Growing Trend
The issue of DRM has become a central concept in software development recently. As a number of court battles mounted by the entertainment industry have failed to control peer-to-peer swapping, proprietary software and hardware developers have introduced more products aimed at defeating unauthorized copying.
Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) recently introduced new DRM software, and the company's Palladium initiative includes incorporating authentication technologies into the core of a computer's system. Microsoft has definitely focused more on DRM in the last few years, Forrester analyst Michael Rasmussen told NewsFactor -- "there's no doubt about that."
But "there's still not much of a market for DRM," says Yankee Group analyst Eric Ogren, and for that reason, he finds Torvalds' announcement strange.
Even Microsoft employees have expressed bewilderment. Ogren told NewsFactor that the reaction among some of his friends at the company is, "Why are you doing this? No one's making a ton of money doing this."
Unpopular Initiatives
To say that DRM initiatives tend to be viewed unfavorably by Linux developers is an understatement. "I do realize that a lot of people want to use the kernel in some way to just make DRM go away, at least as far as Linux is concerned. Either by some policy decision or by extending the GPL (General Public License) to just not allow it," wrote Torvalds.
"I also don't necessarily like DRM myself, but I still ended up feeling the same: I'm an 'Oppenheimer,' and I refuse to play politics with Linux, and I think you can use Linux for whatever you want to -- which very much includes things I don't necessarily personally approve of."
Digital Signature
DRM technology includes a digital signature built into its programming code that it uses to validate the authentication process. Torvalds noted that "it's perfectly okay to sign a kernel image -- I do it myself indirectly every day through the kernel.org."
And, wrote Torvalds, "signing is only the first step: Acting on the fact whether a binary is signed or not (by refusing to load it, for example, or by refusing to give it a secret key) is required too."
Torvalds concluded that "since the signature is pointless unless you use it for something, and since the decision [on] how to use the signature is clearly outside of the scope of the kernel itself (and thus not a 'derived work' or anything like that), I have to convince myself that not only is it clearly okay to act on the knowledge of whether the kernel is signed or not, it's also outside of the scope of what the GPL talks about, and thus irrelevant to the license."
No Hiding Private Keys
As an added point, Torvalds noted that one thing that is clearly not allowed by the GPL is hiding private keys in the binary.
He stressed that developers can sign the binary as a result of the build process, but the GPL does not permit creating a binary that is "aware of certain keys without making those keys public -- because those keys will obviously have been part of the kernel build itself."
RIAA Anti-Piracy Campaign Having An Impact
November 5, 2003 (1:10 p.m. EST)
TechWeb News
The Recording Industry Association of America's strong-arm tactics of taking music file sharers to court -- and threatening others with letters telling them to cease and desist -- seems to be working, according to data released Wednesday by a research firm.
In August, 1.4 million American households deleted all the digital music files on their computers, said The NPD Group, which credits the RIAA's aggressive anti-piracy campaign for the change in consumers' file sharing habits.
Prior to August, when the RIAA's efforts picked up steam, far fewer homes got rid of their illegal music files, said the research firm. In May, for example, when The NPD Group began tracking file deletions, only 600,000 households wiped illegally-gotten files from their systems.
“The message that file sharing is illegal is getting through to mainstream consumers,” said Russ Crupnick, vice president of The NPD Group in a statement.
NPD's numbers also indicate a continued decline in the number of homes acquiring digital music files through peer-to-peer file sharing networks. From August to September, the number dropped 11 percent, while the number of files downloaded from such networks fell by 9 percent.
Not all's rosy for the RIAA, however, which seems to be losing the hearts and minds of consumers. Two-thirds of those who had recently shared files said that the RIAA lawsuits caused them to have a 'much more' or 'somewhat more' negative opinion of the recording industry, while 40 percent of those who hadn't downloaded files held the same feelings.
don't know handyhintz but it sounds plausible enough.eom
or maybe..Sony Plans Convergence of Gadgets, Entertainment
Tuesday November 4, 6:47 pm ET
By Janet Whitman
NEW YORK -- In a move to bolster its position as a content company, Sony Corp. (NYSE:SNE - News; SNE) is putting a push on links between its consumer electronics gadgets and its music, movies and games assets.
As part of its new "convergence" strategy, outlined by Sony executives in Manhattan Tuesday, Sony will introduce this spring a new music distribution service to rival Apple Computer Inc. (NasdaqNM:AAPL - News)'s iTunes. Sony also will introduce new electronic devices for consumers to download music, which will start at about $60, much less than the $300 starting price for Apple's iPod, executives said.
Also as part of this new effort, Sony late next year plans to launch a PSP, or PlayStation Portable, which executives described as a walkman for the 21st century. The portable device will have a bundle of capabilities, such as allowing users to watch DVDs and listen to music.
Sony has put in place a working group to develop more links between its entertainment assets and its consumer electronic products.
The new communication between all of Sony's units, part of the struggling consumer electronic company's turnaround strategy unveiled last week, is "a significant milestone," said Howard Stringer, chairman and chief executive of Sony Corp. of America and vice chairman of Sony.
Separately, Mr. Stringer said Sony is seriously discussing merger and acquisition opportunities, including a possible merger of its music business with a rival. He added, however, that the music business isn't for sale and that Sony would like to maintain control in any deal.
He declined to comment on any specific merger talks.
Sony said it expects to reduce jobs in its music and pictures businesses by 1, 700 by the end of March 2006 from March of this year.
With the restructuring of its entertainment business, the company anticipates $600 million in annual savings.
Meanwhile, Sony is cutting costs at its music business by putting fewer tracks on some compact discs, rather than specifically cutting the costs of the CDs themselves as rival Vivendi SA (V) has done, Mr. Stringer said.
He said consumers prefer fewer songs on each CD and added that putting fewer tracks on a CD could speed up the next release by the artist, he said.{and I guess he said this with a straight face ROFLMAO!!}
-By Janet Whitman, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5248
Could it be...maybe..Westinghouse Digital Forms to Offer Digital Entertainment Products to U.S. Consumers
CITY OF INDUSTRY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 4, 2003 — New Venture Brings Venerable Westinghouse Brand into Digital Age Starting with LCD TVs
Media Contact :
Westinghouse Digital
Jeff Greenberg
(949) 653-0271
jgreenberg@westinghousedigital.com
Maples Communications
Pat Harriman or Mike Kilroy
(949) 477-0710
Westinghouse Digital Electronics today announced its formation and its dedication to offering the latest generation of digital entertainment devices under the world-famous Westinghouse brand.
Based in City of Industry, Westinghouse Digital is an independent, privately held company that will begin selling LCD TVs through consumer electronics retailers and other resellers, with several innovative digital entertainment product lines planned in 2004 for home, business and portable use.
"For over 100 years, the Westinghouse brand has represented the practical application of innovative technology to improve people's lives," said Douglas Woo, president of Westinghouse Digital. "We will deliver on the Westinghouse promise for American families in the 21st century by offering a wide range of consumer electronics products that enhance the enjoyment of digital entertainment.
"Consistent with the Westinghouse heritage, our products include enhanced feature sets, superior industrial design, and reliable and consistent product availability," Woo said. "In the future, we plan to further leverage these advantages by developing synergies between our products and digital media content as part of our value proposition to consumers."
Westinghouse Digital will be launching its line of LCD TVs this month to meet a growing demand for the crispness, clarity and convenient form factor of these flat-panel televisions.
"The worldwide LCD TV market is booming, with shipments expected to grow to more than 27.5 million units in 2007, up from three million in 2003," said Riddhi Patel, senior analyst with iSuppli/Stanford Resources, El Segundo, Calif. "The worldwide market will experience particularly strong growth, with LCD TV shipments rising at a compound rate of 101 percent from 2003 to 2007."
Patel said that customers are attracted to the LCD TV because of its "thin profile, light weight, and high-quality picture. With prices declining, LCDs are becoming an increasingly appealing alternative to traditional CRT-based TV sets."
Ranging in size from 15 to 30 inches, Westinghouse Digital LCD TVs enhance the digital entertainment viewing experience, delivering high contrast ratios, superior brightness, extensive color gamut, high resolution and fast response time for superior image quality. The wide viewing angle is ideal for enjoying the latest digital content, including HDTV and DVDs. Westinghouse LCD TVs also feature advanced picture-in-picture (PIP) capabilities including sizing and location, split screen, viewing up to 13 simultaneous channels, audio swap and mixed mode PIP split between a PC and TV.
The Westinghouse brand has a long and storied history in American business. Legendary inventor George Westinghouse founded the first Westinghouse company in 1886. By the turn of the century, the Westinghouse name began appearing on light bulbs in homes across the United States, and later on radios in the early 1920s. Today, 88 percent of U.S. consumers are familiar with the Westinghouse name. Many consumers recall the extensive line of Westinghouse refrigerators and other home appliances, and the famous slogan, "You can be sure...if it's Westinghouse."
Westinghouse Digital looks forward to contributing to the $3 billion in combined annual revenues from Westinghouse-brand products and services sold worldwide.
For more information about Westinghouse Digital and its products, please visit the company's Web site at www.westinghousedigital.com.
About Westinghouse Digital
Westinghouse Digital Electronics is extending the 100-year-old Westinghouse promise into the digital age through its commitment to offering products that are reliable, easy-to-use and deliver new entertainment experiences. Through superior technology and design, Westinghouse Digital offers consumers the best value in digital entertainment devices. With headquarters in City of Industry, Westinghouse Digital provides products through electronics resellers. Westinghouse Digital can be found at www.westinghousedigital.com.
FCC Endorses Built-In Copy Controls
PCs, TVs, recorders, and other gear must recognize broadcast 'flag' that bans transmission.
Rita Chang, Medill News Service
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
WASHINGTON -- To the dismay of consumer advocates, the Federal Communications Commission has voted to mandate technology that prevents users from sharing copy-protected digital broadcasts.
Advertisement
Tuesday's vote orders makers of hardware that can receive digital television signals to build in recognition of broadcast "flags" that copy-protect content. When the flag-compliant device, such as a PC or DVD recorder, detects content containing a broadcast flag, it prevents its "indiscriminate" transmission over the Internet.
What's Affected
A broadcast flag is a single bit added to the data stream of broadcast DTV programming. By itself, the flag does not protect content. Instead, the FCC is mandating that digital devices check all incoming data for a flag.
In its 5-0 vote, the FCC ruled vendors must comply with the broadcast flag requirements in all equipment by July 1, 2005. Products such as digital VCRs, DVD players, and PCs must then contain copy-protection mechanisms that prevent users from distributing broadcast copyrighted digital content over the Internet.
Existing PCs, televisions, VCRs, DVD players, and related equipment will remain fully functional under the new broadcast flag rule.
The FCC ruling comes in the wake of political pressure exerted by the movie and television industries. In a move to avert online piracy of its movies, the Motion Picture Association of America told lawmakers the movie industry would not license its "high-value" content for digital television broadcast unless a rule prevented viewers from distributing it in turn.
The ruling makes the television and movie industries the big winners, although Rich Taylor, an MPAA spokesperson, is quick to point out that "free over-the-air television would now be delivered."
In a statement, MPAA president Jack Valenti called the FCC decision "a big victory for consumers and the preservation of high value over-the-air free broadcasting."
"All the way around, the consumer wins, and free TV stays alive," Valenti said.
At What Cost?
But the ruling may mean higher prices for appliances like televisions and PCs, whose prices have been declining.
"It's clear the scheme is fundamentally flawed as we are aiming to protecting content by re-architecting devices," says Mike Godwin, a senior technology counsel of Public Knowledge, a consumer watchdog group. "It's a costly approach to protect copyrighted works in the digital world."
The FCC is not requiring consumers to dump their existing devices, but some say the rule will make some equipment obsolete. All recordings made on compliant devices will be encrypted, which means they must be played back on compliant devices.
"More than 40 million DVD players in consumers' homes today will not be able to play content they record on new 'flagged' devices," says Chris Murray, legislative counsel of the Consumers Union.
Adds Godwin, "You can't write to a DVD that plays in a legacy player." Also, PCs designed to receive TV signals will cost more because PC vendors will have to integrate the mandated copy-protection mechanisms.
Other critics of the rule, including representatives of technology companies, say it does not address current equipment that can transmit digital content over the Internet. Just by allowing the existing equipment to exist and function, the FCC undermines the very holes it is trying to plug with the new rule, they say. For instance, most of today's TV sets are analog, and by capturing analog broadcast videos and digitizing them, consumers can circumvent the broadcast rule.
Godwin says the rule also goes against the emerging convergence between entertainment and personal electronic devices.
"We buy electronics with the idea of connecting them to each other," he says. With this rule, "we're going in the opposite direction."
Compromises Noted
A small victory for consumers, say consumer groups, is that the FCC rule does allow fair use of copyrighted content. Two commissioners dissented in part from the ruling, urging a fair use provision be included. However, how it will be implemented is not clear. Consumers can legally transmit copies of videos between home networks and their home and workplace offices, although the rule does not address details of how this might work, or how many copies are allowed.
The same critics credit the FCC for not letting movie studios dictate the copy-protection technology. The MPAA wanted the rule to take effect next summer, rather than the July 2005 deadline set by the FCC.
Some technology vendors are also breathing a sigh of relief that the FCC does not favor a single copy-protection technology. Several firms, notably Philips Electronics, expressed such concern when the rule was under consideration. The FCC has promised an open certification process for the copy-protection technologies.
"Any [anticompetitive] concerns we've raised have been addressed," says Mike Epstein, manager of technology and standards with Philips' Intellectual Property and Standards group. But, he says, "the devil is in the details."
For all the gray areas in the rule's implementation, most say the best scenario after it takes effect is for consumers to continue to seamlessly copy and distribute content under "fair use" parameters. In the worst scenario, incompatibilities could exist among different flag-compliant devices.
Toshiba's New 40GB 1.8-Inch Hard Disk Drive Caters to Today's Mobile Storage Demands; 20GB and 40GB Embedded Drives Power Consumer Gadgets and Business Tools
IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 5, 2003--Toshiba Storage Device Division (SDD), the industry pioneer in small form factor storage, today announced its newest family of 1.8-inch embedded hard disk drives (HDDs) available in 20GB(a) (single platter) and 40GB (dual platter) capacities. Digital entertainment and business devices continue to drive demand for robust storage in a mobile footprint as people want to take their digital content with them when travelling between the office, home, school and car.
"Toshiba continues to build on the 1.8-inch product line to deliver high-capacity drives capable of storing everything from digital music and photos to videos and presentations," said Amy Dalphy, manager, HDD business unit, Toshiba SDD. "We've been expanding our manufacturing capabilities in an effort to address this burgeoning demand as products are selling faster than the drives can be produced."
Toshiba's 1.8-inch family is now available in 5/10/15/20/30 and 40GB capacities, providing a selection of "digital suitcases" to accommodate a range of applications. Products based on 1.8-inch technology include mobile entertainment devices, MP3 players, handheld computers, ultraportable notebooks, portable handheld GPS units, automotive jukebox systems and other specialized digital devices.
Measuring 54 mm wide and 78.5 mm deep, and weighing 51 and 62 grams, respectively, Toshiba's 20/40GB drives are smaller than a credit card and lighter than a pager -- helping manufacturers create small form factor, more portable digital products. The 1.8-inch drives can withstand operational shock of up to 250g and non-operating shock up to 1,000g, providing a rugged, durable storage solution for today's mobile devices.
Product Outlines: 1.8-inch 20GB and 40GB HDDs
Model no. MK2004GAL MK4004GAH
--------------------------- -------------------- ---------------------
Capacity 20GB 40GB
--------------------------- -------------------- ---------------------
No. of platters 1 2
--------------------------- -------------------- ---------------------
No. of heads 2 4
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Average seek time 15ms 15ms
--------------------------- -------------------- ---------------------
Data transfer rate 100MB/sec 100MB/sec
--------------------------- -------------------- ---------------------
Rotational speed 4,200rpm 4,200rpm
--------------------------- -------------------- ---------------------
Voltage 3.3V 3.3V
--------------------------- -------------------- ---------------------
Power consumption 1.4W 1.4W
--------------------------- -------------------- ---------------------
Energy consumption
efficiency .02W/GB .01W/GB
--------------------------- -------------------- ---------------------
Dimensions (WxDxH) 54 x 78.5 x 5 mm 54 x 78.5 x 8 mm
--------------------------- -------------------- ---------------------
Weight 51g 62g
--------------------------- -------------------- ---------------------
Buffer memory 2MB 2MB
--------------------------- -------------------- ---------------------
Interface ATA-5 ATA-5
--------------------------- -------------------- ---------------------
Shock Operating: Operating:
2,450 m/s(2) (250g) 2,450 m/s(2) (250g)
Non-Operating: Non-Operating:
9,800 m/s(2 )(1000g) 9,800 m/s(2 )(1000g)
--------------------------- -------------------- ---------------------
Toshiba's 20GB and 40GB drives are available now. For more information about Toshiba's line of 1.8-inch HDDs, visit www.sdd.toshiba.com.
About Toshiba Storage Device Division
Toshiba SDD, a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., leads the market in the development, design and manufacturing of DVD-ROM, slim CD-R/CD-RW/DVD-R/DVD-RW, combination CD-R/CD-RW/DVD-R/DVD-RW, 1.8-inch hard disk drives and 2.5-inch hard disk drives. Toshiba SDD markets high-quality peripherals to original equipment manufacturers, value-added resellers, value-added dealers, systems integrators and distributors in the United States. Inherent in the company's product line is the high-quality engineering and manufacturing that has established Toshiba products as worldwide leaders. For more information, visit www.sdd.toshiba.com.
About Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc. (TAIS)
Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., TAIS is comprised of three divisions: the Digital Products Division, the Digital Solutions Division and the Storage Device Division. Together, the three divisions provide mobile products and solutions, communications, storage and imaging products and services. Products include industry-leading portable computers, PDAs, projectors, DVD/CD recordable products and hard disk drives for computers, telephony products, digital imaging systems, cable modems, servers, wireless solutions and services. TAIS provides sales, marketing and services for its wide range of information products in the United States and Latin America. TAIS is an independent operating company owned by Toshiba America, Inc., a subsidiary of Toshiba Corporation, which is a world leader in high technology and integrated manufacturing of electrical and electronic components, products and systems. Toshiba has global sales of over $47 billion and more than 300 subsidiaries and affiliates worldwide. For more information visit the company's Web site at www.toshiba.com.
(a) Toshiba defines a megabyte (MB) as 1,000,000 bytes and a gigabyte (GB) as 1,000,000,000 bytes.
TDK Introduces Its First Flash-Memory Portables
By Joseph Palenchar
TWICE
10/27/2003
PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y.— TDK has begun shipping its first flash-memory music portables but has delayed plans for a hard disk drive (HDD) model.
Four flash-memory portables, all shipping in October, feature 128MB or 256MB of internal memory supplemented by optional MMC or SD memory cards. The devices decode MP3 and Windows Media Audio (WMA) files and are priced from an expected everyday $99 to $189. They don't support the WMA Digital Rights Management standard, however, so they won't play WMA-encoded songs from authorized download sites.
The company is still considering HDD music portables but wanted to concentrate on its flash models first, a spokesman said.
All of the new portables provide MP3/WMA playback, and all but the entry-level model feature a digital FM tuner. The tuner's music can be recorded directly to flash memory as a low-bit-rate WAV file.
The new portable line includes the Mojo 1, which integrates memory, controls and FM tuner directly into neckband-style headphones. It features 128MB of embedded memory, 25 programmable FM-tuner presets, and an audio output to share music with a second set of headphones or to play back music through a home stereo system. A single AAA alkaline battery delivers 10 hours of playback.
The three other flash-memory portables feature an outboard memory/control unit. Each doubles as a data-storage device and features voice recorder, which records in low-bit-rate WAV format.
One of the three, the Mojo 256F, also uses text-to-speech software to convert text files into speech for review. The 256F, expected to retail for an everyday $189, delivers 12 hours of listening from one AAA battery.
The $139 Mojo 128F features 128MB memory and 12 hours of playback on a single AAA alkaline battery. The opening-price Mojo X, with an estimated everyday $99, lacks FM tuner but features 128MB memory and 12 hours of playback time on one AAA.
Autosound Slump: Is It Temporary?
By Amy Gilroy
TWICE
9/29/2003
The continued downslide in autosound sales this year is causing some industry members to ask if this is more than a temporary slump.
Overall sales have declined by 11 percent year to date according to The NPD Group, Port Washington, N.Y. Amps and equalizers are down 18 percent and speakers down 14 percent. CD players are off by 13 percent.
"We're in a slump, absolutely," says Sony general manager Bill Lee, adding, "I do believe it's temporary. Music in a great environment like the car doesn't mean less today, in fact, it means more."
Suppliers admit that at least part of autosound's recent trouble is due to the OEM market. But most say the problem is multi-pronged as the industry collides head on with an uncertain economy, competition from other hot products and Internet sales.
Lee points out that the market for performance accessories is still vibrant, indicating that kids continue to spend money on their cars. "I would imagine kids have shifted their limited amount of dollars this year to SEMA-type accessories," he said. "What we have to do in '04 is to introduce excitement back into the 12-volt business. We need to make head units cool again and give kids incentive to shop, not by low price, but by level of coolness."
Ray Windsor, Eclipse marketing and sales VP, pointed to another culprit. "I think there's a shift. NPD is not accurately reflecting all the business going on in car audio. They don't ask Internet sellers about sales and they don't take into account the transshipping business. These are becoming much larger factors, which industry people have elected to ignore."
Retailers offer mixed opinions on the slowdown, with a few key players claiming to buck the trend.
Both Crutchfield and Best Buy said car A/V is up slightly over the prior year, and Car Toys, Seattle, Wash., reported sales were only slightly down. But all acknowledged a general slump.
Best Buy's mobile audio marketing director, Mike Manske, said it's likely that young people are putting their dollars into wireless products and buying higher-end cellphones such as those with built-in cameras.
He said the industry must find a way to push prices back up on single CD players, which are the heart of most systems. "There's an opportunity to learn from the cellular world, which is offering new features like sharing photos. We need to find out how we can personalize the equipment," Manske said.
Crutchfield senior VP of business development, Dan Hodgson, sees price pressure on all CE products driving down dollar sales. "I don't subscribe to the notion that there's some sort of structural change in the market that's happened in the last several months. That doesn't make sense to me. It's likely we're seeing the impact of economic pressures and low consumer confidence levels among this demographic group," he said.
At least one company is not waiting to find out. Alpine is conducting research to determine if "we are experiencing a structural change where consumer demand is actually turning off, or if it is a short-term scenario," marketing VP Stephen Witt said. One of the elements in the study is an examination of the OEM market and its impact now that CD players are available in almost all new vehicles.
Witt said, however, that aftermarket CD players still have an advantage as OEM systems do not allow MP3 or WMA playback, "so therein lies a continued opportunity for the aftermarket." Driving MP3, WMA and AAC products to lower prices should be a goal for every manufacturer, he claimed.
Alpine will share the results of its study at next year's CES and MERA KnowledgeFest. It will conclude with a five-year forecast "of how many dashboards will be out there for us to sell into. This includes exhaustive research breaking down by car make and model that each vehicle platform contains and looking at the bus systems so that we can start an analytical approach," Witt said.
Autosound Sales
January through July
Total 12-volt -11.16%
Amplifier/equalizer -18.49%
Add-on changer controller 10.54%
Cassette player -45.92 %
In-dash CD player -12.63%
CD changer -35.15%
Speaker -14.49%
Mobile multimedia 16.55%
Satellite tuner 76.96%
The Railport Vehicle Personalization System from Johnson Controls to Be Displayed at 2003 SEMA Show
Tuesday November 4, 9:37 am ET
Award-winning Product Allows Consumers to Personalize, Add Excitement To Vehicle Interiors
LAS VEGAS, Nov. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Automotive supplier Johnson Controls (NYSE: JCI - News) is displaying its Railport(TM) Vehicle Personalization System at the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) show in Las Vegas this week. The system will be shown at the Johnson Controls product and technology display booth (#10672) at the Las Vegas Convention Center from Tuesday, November 4 through Friday, November 7.
(Logo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20030423/JCILOGO )
The SEMA event is the world's largest trade show focused on automotive accessory products, trends and technologies.
Railport offers consumers the ability to customize the interior of their vehicles at the point of purchase and throughout a vehicle's lifecycle. Integrated into a vehicle's overhead system, Railport features flexible docking technology that provides for the attachment of a variety of modular devices.
"The Railport system brings exciting new features into vehicles," said John Gorton, group vice president and general manager, product and business development for the Automotive Group of Johnson Controls. "The system provides a new level of versatility and comfort for drivers, who can pick and choose which accessories they want to add and when they want to add them."
According to Gorton, modular devices can be attached easily into place, updated as necessary and/or removed by automotive manufacturers, car dealership personnel, maintenance technicians or vehicle owners.
The Railport technology gives automakers the opportunity to refresh their vehicles' interiors without having to wait for traditional mid-cycle or major model changes. It enables them to achieve this at reduced design, engineering and tooling costs. The system also enables consumers to customize an interior to meet their unique lifestyles and hobbies.
At the SEMA show, several different Railport modules that are in production or conceptual are on display in the Johnson Controls booth. They include:
-- AutoVision(R) system with self-powered speakers - stand-alone,
"plug-and-play" version of Johnson Controls' popular AutoVision video
entertainment system;
-- DVD player with 10-inch screen and tuner - used as an additional screen
for third-row passengers. Also compatible with video game consoles;
-- MP3 media hard drive - removable hard drive allows consumers to store
and play MP3 files through the vehicle's speaker system;
-- BlueConnect(TM) Hands-Free Cellular Phone System - Johnson Controls
technology provides a hands-free voice activated interface with a
Bluetooth-enabled cellular phone;
-- A HomeLink(R) Wireless Control System with TravelNote(R) Digital Voice
Recorder - A Johnson Controls product capable of controlling a variety
of home convenience and safety devices. Bundled with the company's
TravelNote digital voice recorder which provides up to four minutes of
record/play time;
-- GMRS two-way radios - removable hand-held radios are charged while in
the storage module;
-- Satellite Radio - portable module also allows passengers to enjoy
satellite radio outside of the car;
-- Master Lock units - includes a lockable storage bin, a Python storage
bin that contains Master Lock's Python security cable, and an Autosafe
bin for secure storage of valuables; and
-- First Aid Kit - auto-specific first aid kit that includes magnifying
tweezers, seat-belt cutter, reflective blanket, adhesive bandages and
other items.
The Railport system debuted in the 2004 Ford F-150 pickup truck, and comes as standard equipment on the automaker's XLT, FX4 and Lariat SuperCab and SuperCrew models.
Johnson Controls has been named a 2004 Automotive News Premier Automotive Suppliers' Contribution to Excellence (PACE) Award finalist for original equipment suppliers in the product category for the Railport system. The awards will be presented in March 2004. In 2002, the Railport system received a bronze Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA) in the consumer product category from the Industrial Designers Society of America.
Celebrity autograph sessions at Johnson Controls exhibit
Josh Hancock, host of the History Channel's new "Shifting Gears", television show will appear at the Johnson Controls exhibit on Wednesday, November 5 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. for an autograph session. Johnson Controls is a sponsor of the Shifting Gears program. Alex Tagliani, driver of the No. 33 Johnson Controls Lola in the 2003 Bridgestone Presents The Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford racing series will be available for autographs on Thursday, November 6 from 12 noon to 3 p.m.
Johnson Controls is a global market leader in automotive systems and facility management and control. In the automotive market, it is a major supplier of integrated seating and interior systems, and batteries. For non- residential facilities, Johnson Controls provides control systems and services including comfort, energy and security management. Johnson Controls (NYSE: JCI - News), founded in 1885, has headquarters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Johnson Controls, Inc.
Record Label Giving Away CD's/Open Letter To RIAA
Email: melissa@gokartrecords.com
Url: http://www.gokartrecords.com/freedownload
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Free Album Downloads!
We at Go-Kart Records want to make it perfectly clear that the RIAA does not represent the views of all record labels. So, we are putting our music where our mouth is to prove a point. We believe that if you like the music you hear you will support it by going to shows, telling your friends, and buying the bands CDs. With this in mind, we are allowing people to download some of our current releases AT NO CHARGE. In other words, we are essentially GIVING these albums away!
We feel that only by embracing technology can we gain from it, and that a battle like the one that the RIAA is fighting can simply not be won.
We do not believe that online downloads are all that is hurting the music industry. It is a combination of problems, CD burning being the most injurious. Of course, major labels will never take action against the manufacturers of burnable CDs, since in some cases they would then have to sue themselves (why would Sony sue Sony?) Instead they are going after the music fans, whom they hope to intimidate and extort.
We also feel that the lack of original and meaningful music is part of the major labels' problem. Simply put, if there is better music, people will spend money to own it instead of downloading or burning it. The success of Itunes proves that people are willing to buy music online if it is delivered in an intelligent way that is respectful of the consumer.
The major labels control almost all the means of exposure available today. How can you sell records without exposure? Radio is controlled through payola (or its modern form, consultants), the print media is controlled through quid-pro-quo agreements of ads for coverage and vice versa, retail is controlled by co-op dollars (which also includes in-store play for videos), and they even buy their artists' way onto opening slots on tours. So, with a few exceptions, the new music that most people are exposed to is controlled by the five major labels. But they CAN'T control what people download. All they can try to do is control people's access to MP3s, or scare them out of downloading music altogether!
These songs are all RIAA safe! If you like what you hear, please make a donation (see the PayPal button), check out the bands' shows, and spread the word. If you don't, what have you lost?
To read a more in depth article about why we feel the RIAA is wrong please click here http://www.gokartrecords.com/freedownload/riaa.php and please send this email and/or the open letter to the RIAA to as many people as you can. Only by educating each other can we hope to take advantage of the technical innovations and not run scared from them.
To read an interview discussing this with Greg from Go-kart go here http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2003/09/25/gokart.html\
Also, make sure to check out our upcoming release, the first commercially sold MP3 Sampler called GO-KART MP300 RACEWAY featuring 150 bands and 300 songs. Visit www.gokartrecords.com/mp300 for a demonstration.
First International Digital Introduces New and Improved Wireless Music Adapter
Monday November 3, 9:52 am ET
Featuring a 12 VDC Auto Adapter, the irock! 400FM Beamit links virtually any audio device to any FM receiver wirelessly
CHICAGO, Nov. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- First International Digital, Inc. (FID), a Motorola spin-off and maker of the popular irock! family of digital audio devices, today introduced an improved wireless music adapter that links portable music devices to any FM car or home stereo. Priced at only $29.99, this affordable, easy to use accessory enables any MP3, CD, or DVD player, Satellite Radio, PDA, laptop or PC to broadcast to a nearby car or home stereo system without wires, with full stereo sound and no hassles.
"One of the most requested accessories for the 400FM's predecessor, the 300W, was an alternate source of power for the unit," said Randy Cavaiani, Executive Vice President of Marketing and Sales for FID. "The 400FM Beamit offers dual power. Choose two AAA batteries or plug it to your car's power source using the included 12 VDC Auto Adapter."
The irock! Beamit is an FM modulator that wirelessly transmits its signal on one of four FM frequencies. By simply plugging the Beamit into the headphone jack of a portable music device, selecting a frequency on the adapter and tuning the stereo to 88.1, 88.3, 88.5 or 88.7 FM, users get instant playback of their favorite tunes on any stereo system. The Beamit's operating range (limited by FCC regulations) is 10-30 feet depending upon environmental conditions and the quality of the FM receiver.
The light (2.5 oz.), small (2"x 3"x 1"), portable irock! Beamit has a simple on-off switch and a red LED that lights up when the unit is on. In addition, it has a 7" flexible antenna that terminates in a mini-jack that is plugged into the headphone jack of any portable audio player. The antenna stores into the irock! Beamit so the plug is protected when not in use.
The irock! Beamit wireless music adapter is available now at North American retail outlets including Circuit City, CompUSA, Fry's, Good Guys, RadioShack, and Sharper Image for an estimated retail price of only $29.99. The Beamit can also be purchased directly from FID at www.myirock.com .
About First International Digital
FID, or First International Digital, Inc., (www.fidinc.com), a Motorola spin-off headquartered near Chicago, is a global multimedia company with nearly 100 patents in audio, video, speech and communications technology. The company is a leading provider of multimedia software and hardware solutions, including the patented MP3i(TM) and maxMIDI(TM) technologies and related hardware platforms such as digital audio players and FM transmitters. FID licenses its software technology to OEM's for creating rich media experiences for entertainment and education applications. FID is privately financed by a number of corporate investors including Motorola, Via Technologies, and First International Computer.
For more information contact:
Alejandro Arango
Brodeur Worldwide
617.587.2034
aarango@brodeur.com
Randy Cavaiani
First International Digital, Inc.
847.202.1900 Ext.227
rcavaiani@fidinc.com
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Source: First International Digital, Inc.