@miikerman wrote:
But I just continue to believe that there will be a demand, especially for something as useful and, at times, graceful as the Clips–in their own right, much handier than a phone.
I wholeheartedly agree that the dedicated mp3 player (and especially the Clip line) is a very useful music player, and I personally think that anytime you have a “Swiss army” style (or multi-purpose) device, while it may do a lot of things adequately, it cannot do any one thing exceptionally well. I don’t own, nor want a “smart-phone” but (and this is the part where I disagree with you) more and more people are getting them or the latest alternative, the tablets. Those are the ‘hot-ticket’ electronic items right now, pure & simple.
Companies like SanDisk, Samsung, Sony, etc. are going to bring to market what the majority of people are asking for (or think that they want), and I believe the tide is turning against the individual mp3 player.
Personally, I’d be thrilled to death if SanDisk merely upgraded the Clip+ or Zip to a larger internal memory to 16, 32, 64 or even 128GB while still maintaining the SD card slot. We’ve been told by SanDisk they have no plans to do this as sales figures indicate the biggest seller in the Clip line is the 4GB model. However, they brought the Fuze+ out in a 16GB version; heck even the ancient View was available is a 16GB model. So why not the Clip?
There’s no doubt there are still technological improvements that could still be made to the lowly mp3 player. The afore-mentioned memory size, stereo Bluetooth capabilities to eliminate headphone cords, wireless charging so your player wouldn’t be tied to a computer or charger, wireless downloading (for the same reason), more powerful batteries and more efficient processors for longer play-time, (right JK98?), HD radio, voice recognition and command, the list goes on & on. All this technology (or at least most of it) already exists. Yes, in some cases it’s going to mean higher prices but it seems SanDisk is compelled to fill a specific price niche and is afraid to venture into the higher-end (or higher priced) market. I think other companies feel their products are where they want them to be as well, so it’s very doubtful (at least in my mind) that we’ll see these improvements except in different devices, like phones or tablets.
It will be interesting to see what develops and what fades away in the next few years.
