Dell Drops Hard Drive MP3 Player Line

The passing of the hard-drive based MP3 players at Dell went very quietly. According to Bloomberg, the decision was made to discontinue these lines in late December and early January. Dell will continue to sell the DJ Ditty (pictured above), which has 512MB of flash memory, as well as players from other companies.

The hard-drive Jukebox players held 2,500 to 15,000 songs. The DJ Ditty, which weighs 1.29 ounces and includes an FM radio, stores as many as 220 songs, according to Dell’s Web site.

“We saw an opportunity to streamline and consolidate our portfolio,” Dell spokesman Liem Nguyen said. “We made a decision to transition from the hard-drive products to flash players at the beginning of this year.” Source: Bloomberg via Statesman.com

We Say: Much of the press on this has centered around Dell failing to take market share and thus giving up on the hard-drive based players. While this may indeed be much of the story, I wonder about the statement by Nguyen above. It could, in fact, mean that Dell is going to focus on and introduce more flash-based players this year. Or it could mean that Dell, like many companies before it, has found the iPod nut too tough to crack. view pic