Dell DJ Ditty MP3 Player Discontinued

Dell’s attempt to take a bite out of Apple Computer’s iPod has failed. The PC vendor has stopped selling its DJ Ditty music player on its website and has decided to cease development of its own music players, a company spokesman said Wednesday.

When DJ Ditty was first announced last September, Dell hoped the player’s monochrome display and support of Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio format would give it a leg up on the iPod Shuffle. Dell claimed that with the Windows media format, its player could hold nearly twice as many songs as a comparable iPod Shuffle.

However, the US$99 player never caught on, and it was criticized as being hard to use.

Dell removed DJ Ditty from its website on Aug. 17, said Dell spokesman Venancio Figueroa. “We want to tighten our consumer product focus, and we believe we can do that with PCs, TVs and printers,” he said.

Dell will still sell music players, however, including those made by Sandisk, Samsung Electronics, Creative Technology and IRiver America.

-Robert McMillan, IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)

Related Link:

• Apple to Pay Creative $100M to End iPod Dispute

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