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Thursday, 02 June 2005 |
Is This Digital Music's Future?
BusinessWeek
Startup MusicGiants is offering downloads of CD quality. Industry watchers agree
there's a market -- but just how big is another question
When it comes to the red-hot online music business, a lot of the focus has been
on how we'll get our music: whether we'll buy songs from a download site such as
Apple's (APPL ) iTunes music store, or rent it from subscription services that
let you listen to almost anything so long as you keep paying the bill, a la
Napster (NAPS ) or Real Network's (RNWK ) Rhapsody service.
But there's another question that is going to become an important issue for an
increasing percentage of consumers: Namely, what will the sound quality of this
music be? Today, songs pulled off the Net are skimpy facsimiles of the ones you
get on a CD. They are highly compressed -- stripped of millions of digital bits
that leave them with about one tenth of the data found on a CD track (that's
assuming the typical "bit rate" of 128 kilobits-per-second). You can transfer
the files fast, but the sacrifice is sound quality.
CD QUALITY. That's fine for now, since most people listen to digital music on
their PCs or MP3 players -- devices normally used with cheap speakers that mask
any sound quality deficiencies. And compression has played a vital role in the
development of the market so far. It's the magic that makes iPod-mania possible,
by enabling even tiny devices with limited storage to carry thousands of songs.Write Comment (0 Comments) |
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Thursday, 02 June 2005 |
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Samsung has plans to release their
YP-MT6x with red and white colors
including the Canadian flag for this year's Canada day July 1, 2005. Official
release date or availability will be posted here when we have more details.
Some images can be seen
here Write Comment (0 Comments) |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 02 June 2005 )
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Wednesday, 01 June 2005 |
MP3
leaders face off
Electronic Business -
San Jose,CA,USA
PortalPlayer and SigmaTel are taking aim at new markets—including each others'
After dominating their respective markets and seeing their sales multiply during
the past year, the top two suppliers of MP3 music player semiconductors are
introducing new chips targeting each other's markets.
PortalPlayer, the leading supplier of chips used for audio processing and other
functions in MP3 players based on a hard disk drive, such as Apple Computer's
iPod, recently unveiled its first chips for players that store music in flash
memory. Meanwhile SigmaTel, the leading supplier of MP3 audio chips for
flash-based players, such as those from Creative Technologies, Dell and Samsung,
plans to introduce new chips for hard-disk players in the third quarter of 2005.
"Both companies are aiming at each others' markets," says iSuppli analyst Shyam
Nagrani. "They had to, because that's the only way they could grow." Indeed,
although the digital music market shows few signs of slowing, each company so
thoroughly controls its own market segment that it would be difficult for either
to gain much more market share. Despite competition from Intel, Texas
Instruments, Philips and others, iSuppli estimates, PortalPlayer chips are used
in at least 80 percent of MP3 players based on hard disks and SigmaTel chips are
used in more than 70 percent of flash-based players.
Apple is a big factor in both companies' success. PortalPlayer's chips have
powered all of Apple's wildly successful iPod hard-disk players, which generated
more than $1 billion in sales in 2004. PortalPlayer's sales have soared along
with the iPod's, quadrupling from $21 million in 2003 to $93 million in 2004.
SigmaTel, which sold chips mostly to other MP3 makers last year, nearly doubled
its sales, from $100 million to $195 million, during 2004. But the company's
recent deal to supply chips for Apple's new Shuffle flash-based players was key
to its 26 percent sales growth in 2005's first quarter.Write Comment (0 Comments) |
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Tuesday, 31 May 2005 |
Samsung
starts mass production of 70nm flash
ZDNet UK - UK
Larger storage densities at cheaper prices could soon be on the cards, in
the drives and behind new mobile devices.
Memory card prices look likely to fall following Samsung's announcement late on
Monday that it had begun mass-producing 4Gb NAND Flash memory chips using a 70nm
process.
NAND Flash memory is used in CompactFlash cards, and also in portable devices
such as MP3 players, digital cameras and USB memory sticks.Write Comment (0 Comments) |
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