How the iPod Ran Circles Around the Walkman

It's just amazingly stupid - how Sony is letting everyone else get ahead in the digital music player market. Why would anyone buy Sony's 20GB hard disk player for $50 more than the comparable iPod? In fact, given that Sony can be a great volume player, they should be beating iPod on price and features and they should be coming out with an even lower priced model under their AIWA or other brand to beat the Creative, iRiver and other Asian competitors.

And they just have to support the widest variety of standards out there - Sony - hear it now before it's too late - Atrac is dead - just like the Betamax - give up now and get onto the popular stuff. Think about 5.1 channel mp3 standard recently announced with backward and cross compatibility with every other standard. And join forces wit Microsoft, Yahoo and Real to beat Apple.

As a consumer, we need the competition - Sony with its worldwide reach and branding power can really make this a consumer product from the current hightech image it has and bring standardization, lower prices and high quality to the market.
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