Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
Lower prices for the Zen V: in a move that raises the value-for-money bar considerably, the Zen V now sells for 30 bucks less—this means you can get the 1/2/4GB versions for $90/$120/$160 respectively. For comparison’s sake, the 1GB Nano sells for $150 while the same-size Shuffle sells for $100.
Q4 financial results and conference call notes
$230.9M in sales ($305.4M a year ago)
$12.7M net loss ($31.9M a year ago)
Verdict? Betten than last year, but stil… Michael from epiZENter also jotted some notes from the conference call—interesting to see they’re pushing the X-Fi technology, talking about a future product that is connected to the Zen Vision:M [...]
Preface
Wasn’t it Creative who said it would clean up its over-crowded product line, in a conference call a few months ago? Seems like some engineers were kept out of the loop, creating yet another iPod nano competitor, probably thinking that the recently introduced Zen V/Zen V Plus weren’t adequate enough. We’re talking about the Neeon [...]
FM recording no more for Zen Vision owners with latest firmware: Creative apparently thinks that the FM recording feature is too much of a luxury for Zen Vision (not the :M one) owners, so in the latest firmware they’re kind enough to remove that capability. Thanks Creative! You! Rock!
Creative Labs ‘Summer Special’ deals: now’s you chance to get a Zen Micro power adapter for $10 (was: $30) or a battery for $15 (was: $40). [via]
Grado Labs has started shipping the GS1000: The new flagship of their headphone line, introduced at the International Head-Fi Convention in New York, where it gathered some rave reviews. Bass, mids, highs; it seems it does all equally well and the new cushion design is supposed to be very comfortable. Is this ideal pair of [...]
Last week, Creative Labs introduced two miniaturized versions of its flagship Zen Vision:M player, the Zen V and Zen V Plus players. What the Plus does that the plain V doesn’t, is video (mainly: MPEG-4, WMV and DivX) and FM radio. And that difference will set you back a mere $10-$30 bucks (depending on the [...]
Creative to sell Zen Vision:M without the AC adapter: in an effort to slash prices, Creative introduces the Zen Vision:M SD, which is the Zen Vision:M we’ve all grown to love without an AC adapter (as Apple does with the iPods for a couple of years now), and an additional unidentified acronym added at the [...]
Deal: Creative’s 1GB flash-based players for $70: you can get a 1GB Zen Nano Plus or MuVo TX FM for 70 bucks from Creative’s webstore. US only, argh. [via]
BusinessWeek runs a piece on Tim Schaaff, Sony’s Senior VP of Software Development: the man who left Apple to undertake a huge task—make Sony’s software work. That means bringing the various departments closer, giving more power to software developers and keeping a low profile so as not to collide with the rather autonomous hardware engineers.
Review: [...]