Dell bids adieu to hard-drive music players

Another Apple iPod competitor quits while it's far behind. This time ZDNet reports that Dell will discontinue its hard-drive based music players, the 5GB Pocket DJ, 20GB Dell DJ20 and 30GB Dell DJ30, but will continue to sell its DJ Ditty flash players. Dell claims it's "streamlining" its MP3 product line. Umm yeah. More like cutting its losses.

Richard Doherty at The Envisioneering Group thought Dell's move was due it being "unable to compete with Apple Computer's success in the MP3 player market." He said, "If there were 100 million music players shipping a year, which we think will happen by the end of the decade, people might go with Dell." However, Doherty noted that "Dell never broke out of the 'everybody else' category."