Tis' the Season to Get Jiggy
by Hwang Dae-jin (djhwang@chosun.com)
Updated Oct.12,2003 20:15 KST
With Christmas and holiday seasons coming up, companies that make MP3 players are introducing their newest product lines. One of the hottest selling items is an MP3 player with a large gigabytes (GB) capacity, which also comes with a hard disk drive (HDD) installed.
The largest MP3 manufacturer in Korea, iRiver, has developed a MP3 with a 10 GB HDD, more than 5,000 of which were sold on the domestic market within 3 weeks of its release.
Cowon Systems, Inc., whose MP3 players that can be worn as necklaces, is preparing another new product "iAudio 4" that is a size of a cigarette lighter. The iAudio 4 weighs 30g grams, 12 grams lighter than the previous model, the CW-300, and iAudio 4 is 10 millimeters thinner, both vertically and horizontally. Cowon also plans to join in the HDD MP3 player competition soon, with their own 20 GB HDD player.
Samsung is planning to release it YP-900, with a 10 GB HDD, that can hold 2,500 songs. The firm has even remodeled its Yepp customer service web page. Costumers can now get online replies within two hours and can get a plyer fixed within 12 hours. Samsung aims to take 40 percent of the domestic MP3 player market.
