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By Rich Menta- 12/07/99 Another major manufacturer has thrown their hat into the growing MP3 ring. Toshiba, the Japanese electronic giant, announced their entry, the diGO MM300, this week. The unit will be available in Japan on Dec 25th. with the US release to eventually follow. |
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The unit carries roughly the same dimensions as the Diamond Rio PMP500 and will carry a price tag of $295 for a 64MB unit. The diGO supports both the MP3 and SolidAudio formats, the latter another new comer in an already crowded field of digital standard wannabe's that hope to unseat the MP3 format's dominance but, combined, may only serve to strengthen it by confusing the market. SolidAudio was developed by Kobe Steel on technology developed at NT&T (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone).
The diGo is a natural for Toshiba, not only because of their presence in traditional audio products, but because they are the largest maker of the SmartMedia memory cards used in MP3 portables. More important, Toshiba is a distribution powerhouse who, along with RCA, Philips and Sony, can put these units in retail stores, a task that, so far, has been out of reach to MP3 portable pioneers Diamond and Creative.
Fortunately for the smaller companies, only RCA was able to ship a unit in time for the holiday season. Still, that offers only temporary consolation as a Pandora's box appears to be opening with Panasonic and GE waiting in the wings. To protect themselves, look for the likes of Eiger Labs (MPman) and Sensory Science (RaveMP) to design players for "smaller" major manufacturers like Emerson, Radio Shack, Fisher, and whoever else doesn't have the R&D resources to design a unit in time for Xmas 2000.
Copyright 1999 MP3 Newswire. All rights reserved.
