As SanDisk tries to find more ways to be profitable, the company could kill its older flash-memory based Sansa line of music players and instead focus on promoting its storage cards that come pre-loaded with music.
Instead of the iPod competitors that it has built, SanDisk will be pushing its slotMusic cards business. SlotMusic Cards are microSD memory cards that come pre-loaded with music albums. SanDisk’s recent music players have been designed to promote the storage cards and those players will continue to be available.
A company spokeswoman confirmed the change. "Sandisk is committed to its
digital music players and we have the Sansa Fuze and Clip on retail
shelves," she says. "We are just looking at a shift in strategy that
goes to the core of the company’s focus on flash memory."
SanDisk entered the digital music player in 2005 with the Sansa music player. The inexpensive flash-based players became an iPod alternative for extremely budget conscious buyers.
Yet SanDisk has barely managed to make a dent in iPod’s hegemony. Earlier this month, Apple said it sold 22.7 million iPods worldwide in the previous quarter, a three percent growth from the year before.
Recently, SanDisk started promoting its slotMusic cards product extensively. At the Consumer Electronics Show this year, the company introduced a new player called slotRadio and a line of companion music cards.
It’s a significant evolution for the Sansa players that was first introduced in 2005 with the e100 series. The devices were initially available in the 512 MB and 1 GB versions and featured an SD card slot to add more storage. The flash-based players supported formats such as MP3 and Windows Media Audio (WMA) and storage was expandable using microSD cards.
Now SanDisk wants to make the microSD cards the centerpiece of its digital music business. In October 2008 the company launched the Sansa slotMusic player. The $20 slotMusic players were created to play slotMusic cards or user-loaded microSD cards.
The idea hasn’t been met with great enthusiasm from bloggers. So is SanDisk making the right bet or should it be concede the ring to the iPod and get out of the music player business entirely?
Photo: Sansa Clip (germanium/Flickr)
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