ZDNet recently met with Creative Labs for a briefing on their portable music strategy for the next six months. Creative is already one of the premier names in the business -- for both hard disk and flash memory-based digital music players. But in the months ahead, Creative is clearly emphasising the hard disk player market.
The 6GB Nomad Jukebox currently accounts for more than 50 percent of Creative's music player sales. Our primary gripe is that the Jukebox is about the same size as the portable CD player that digital audio should be making redundant--not to mention, heavier. But the US arm of the company has plans to address that; by September, it will have two new Jukebox products on the US market.
The first, which Creative is currently referring to as the ever-catchy Prototype 1 (which sadly, is a better name than that of many products on the market), is the snazzier-looking of the two. This totally new design, which is about the same shape and size as a mini-voice recorder (about 15 centimetres high and 6 centimetres wide), will offer about 6 to 10GB of storage and should cost around US$299. That's about the same price as the Intel Pocket Concert Audio Player, which offers 128MB of flash based-memory. While it's a huge size reduction from the Nomad Jukebox, it's still larger -- and likely to be heavier -- than many other players on the market.
The second, yep, you guessed it, Prototype 2, looks like the current Nomad Jukebox, though shrunk down by 30-percent. But, while the smaller size is certainly a welcome improvement, the bigger story is what's going inside the player. First off, Jukebox "junior" will hold between 10GB and 20G of music. Creative is also considering equipping the new device with a IEEE 1394 (FireWire) connection, which would significantly speed up music transfer--assuming your PC supports it. Company spokespersons are guessing that "junior" will cost somewhere between US$399 and US$449.
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