Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
Apple secures flash memory supplies till 2010 (and leaves no doubt as to who 0wnz the market now): “Apple on Monday announced that it has reached long-term supply agreements with Hynix, Intel, Micron, Samsung Electronics and Toshiba to secure the supply of NAND flash memory through 2010.” Apple will prepay its suppliers $1.5Bn in the [...]
Samsung to strike (yet another) huge deal with Apple: According to a Korean news provider, “by the end of November, Samsung is expected to sign a long-term, several hundred million dollar contract with Apple to supply flash chips for its iPod digital music players”.
This is not to be confused with the $3.8Bn join investment plan [...]
Apple going for third memory supplier: Samsung and Toshiba, its main flash memory suppliers, to be joined by South-Korea based Hynix Semiconductor. The manufacturer will take over the 512MB/1GB chips (used on the iPod shuffle).
Side-fact: things to get better for memory chips’ supply and demand in December.
Samsung: no plans to open online music biz: that news we reported the other day, forget it. “We are not at all interested in a music service ourselves,” Choi Gee-sung, president of Samsung’s digital media business told reporters. Instead they’re focused on the hardware side of things, where they’re hoping to ship 5M MP3 players [...]
Samsung to enter online music business: they’re counting on the fact that the iTunes Music Store doesn’t have any presence in Asia (besides Japan). Date of launch is unknown; expect a service similar to the likes of Napster, Rhapsody, Yahoo! Unlimited—i.e. WMA files with DRM10 support. And unless they surprise us pleasantly, we’ve got a [...]
And the hits just keep on coming for Samsung: Apple had proposed a joint $3.8Bn investment plan in flash chip production for its MP3 players but ended the talks “as the anti-Samsung sentiment has recently deepened among some political and civic groups”—that should teach them not to do price fixing again; read: $300M fine for [...]
Review: Cambridge Audio Azur 340A integrated amplifier (goes for a mere—in audiophile’s terms—$250, yet earns glowing review; “When you buy forty watts, you should know what you’re not getting. The thing is, the forty watts that the 340A does deliver are of excellent, in fact audiophile quality, and more than enough for most real-world listening.”; [...]
It’s now available in the States. No reviews yet, but it looks beautiful and the features leave no-one complaining.
comes in 20GB and 30GB versions
weighs 0.3lbs
measures 0.5×4×0.5 in.
1.8-inch color LCD, 128×96 resolution
plays MP3, WMA, and WMA-DRM (firmware upgrade allows reproductions of tracks from subscription-based services)
video playback, photo (JPEG) viewing
voice & line-in recording
USB On-The-Go
battery life rated at [...]