Round-up of iPods Killers for 2006

Mp3newswire.net did a round-up of potential iPod killers for Summer 2006.

Looking for an MP3 player and you are open to units other than the iPod? I doubt any of these units will be iPod killers (that silly term their marketing departments continue to use), but they do offer a lot of features not (yet) found on an iPod. As we said before, individually there is no such thing as an iPod killer, but together these players can slowly chip away at Apple’s market share. That’s making the assumption that the iPod’s ability to sell three out of every four players is not sustainable. iTunes does lock a lot of users into Apple’s DRM format, so it may be a really slow chipping away.

• Toshiba Gigabeat S
• Samsung SBH-300 Bluetooth
• Sony NW-A1200 with 8GB
• NEC VoTol
• Sandisk Sansa e200 Series
• Oregon Scientific MP121 Measures BMI
• Samsung YP-U2
• Viliv P1
• Viliv P2 with GPS
• iRiver E10 Subs as TV Remote
• Panasonic D-Snap SD 330 series and SD 500 series
• Archos 104
• Venzero One
• MobiBLU Cube 2
• MobiBLU B153
• RCA Lyra X3000
• Delkin Revel
• JVC XA-F107 and XA-F57
• Acer MP-500
• Dada Code M
• iRiver Clix
• Samsung YP-Z5
• Maxfield Max-Joy Protects the Ears
• Lenovo Easy Cube MP500
• Kiss MP3 Player
• Sony Thumb-drive Player
• Tomy Bear MP3
• Inkel Widetouch 5.6
• Sharp Music Carry QT-MPA10
• Memorex MMP8565
• Memorex 8550 and 3774
• Shiro AS
• Evergreen DN-2000 (sells for less than $10PHP 587INR 847EUR 10CNY 73! )

Ok, not all of the media players in the list are really worth it — some are just out of the iPod’s league while others are just cutesy. But if I were in a world where Apple does not exist, I would go for Viliv P2 with GPS (yup, GPS) —
4.3 inch color LCD widescreen, 60GB storage, supports MPEG-1/2/4, H.264, DivX, WMV 7/8/9, XviD, MP3, WMA, OGG, AC-3, and WAV.

[tags]apple, ipod, nano, media player, mp3[/tags]