SanDisk unveils an 8GB iPod rival

The digital music player industry saw the battle for its market share being intensified on Monday with SanDisk taking a huge leap to launch a flash memory based portable music player that offers twice the storage capacity of comparable Apple iPod models with highly reduced prices.

SanDisk, unveiled a model which boasts of 8GB of storage capacity, enabling it to save up to 2,000 songs – twice the capacity of the best-selling iPod Nano. The Sansa e280 costs $ 249.99 and enables the users to expand the memory to 10 GB through an external microSD expansion slot.

The Milpitas technology company also slashed prices for three related MP3 players: the 2 GB Sansa e250 dropped from $ 179.99 to $ 139.99, the 4 GB e260 from $ 229.99 to $ 179.99 and the 6 GB e270 from $ 279.99 to $ 219.99.

"The most costly ingredient in a flash-based MP3 player is the flash memory. Since we make the flash memory, we essentially remove the middleman and pass that saving directly to the consumer," said Eric Bone, director of audio/video product marketing at SanDisk

Commenting on his experience with the SanDisk players a user said, “The SanDisk Sansa e200 series has a decent sound quality, processor performance, and battery life but the buttons surrounding the SanDisk Sansa e200's scrollwheel can be difficult to press; the mechanical scrollwheel can tire out some thumbs; photos and video must go through conversion with bundled software and the recordings are made only in WAV.”

Another user seemed more satisfied as he stated “The SanDisk Sansa e200 series offers a boatload of features for a reasonable price. My investment into it seems wise.”

Sandisk is the second largest seller of flash memory based music players in North America, trailing far behind Apple’s iPod. According to NPD Group, a market researcher, Apple held 75.6 per cent of the digital music player market in the US in the second quarter, whereas SanDisk is hoping to escalate its market share from 10 per cent to 30-35 per cent.

The portable music player market seems to have been sluggish with a draught of new iPod models but this initiative taken by SanDisk will probably prove as one step towards accelerating it.