Dell computers is taking another run at the portable media player market after the beating they took on the DJ. It seems they bought a company that manufactures a wireless media player, not Zune but Zing, that may help them with a new shot at the market.

People are calling it another shot at Apple of an “iPod Killer” but thats the sheeple following the pack. There is never to be an “iPod killer” unless Apple decides to kill it. No other company is going to design or develop something so radical it overtakes iPod as the dominant PMP. They were the first to mass market the devices and they will remain on top forever.

What this new Dell device may be is not an “iPod Killer” but a “Zune Killer”. Lets face facts Zune is not burning things up and Microsoft has had more fumbles than successes thus far and Dell must realize just how badly Microsoft has screwed Zune with the DRM crap and horrible marketing approach and what Dell saw was just how fast and easy Microsoft took the #2 slot with Zune players regardless of how poorly Zune was introduced to market and they decided to try again.

I think its too late for Dell to take #2 because Microsoft would rather lose more cash and build a better Zune then to be pushed out of the market by Dell but they probably realize they can do well in the #3 spot and maybe thats good enough for Dell.

Byte of the Apple Here Comes Dell To Compete With The iPod, Again – BusinessWeek

Looks like Dell is going to make another run at the music player business. All I can say is “here we go again.” Perhaps you’ll remember its ill-fated attempt to compete with Apple’s iPod. It lasted all of three years.

What’s different this time around? Well last year Dell acquired a little music software outfit called Zing which in 2006 was demonstrating a concept design that essentially put Wi-Fi streaming inside a portable player, thus giving it the ability to, among other things, play Sirius streams.
Sound familiar? Well yeah, actually. My very favorite thing to do with the iPod touch is to listen to streams from Pandora and Last.fm. Okay, Sirius and XM aren’t on the iTunes App Store, but if they know what’s good for them, they’ll offer their subscribers who like to listen via the Web (ahem) an iPhone/iPod touch application that will work via Wi-Fi and/or 3G, but I digress.

Dell’s player might include streaming capabilities, and could also work with Rhapsody, which isn’t a bad service at all, or it might launch its own music service. And hey, if it supports MP3 music files, as it presumably would, it would support music sold on Rhapsody, Amazon, eMusic and whoever else has decided to go the MP3 route. The problem, will of course, come down to marketing and positioning aganst Apple, and we all know how that tends to work out. Its closest rival in the U.S. is SanDisk, which has a market share of about 11%, though it has tended to be a profitable share profitable share.