Am I the only one to recognize this ? Why do most MP3 players have such obscure names ?
I don't like the iPod. I really don't. But one still has to acknowledge the ingenuity of their marketing people. The iPods are just named 1G, 2G, 3G, and now the 4G ( 'G' is for generation..for the uninitated ). The screen-less avatar of the iPod is just the ' Shuffle ' .No 'SLA 5' or some such thing.No. Its just 'Shuffle'. I presume they're gonna call their next generation Shuffle 2G and so on. In contrast, look at Creative. They have the Creative Nomad Jukebox, Creative Nomad Zen, Creative Nomad Zen USB 2.0, Creative Nomad Zen NX, Creative Nomad Zen Xtra. They could all potentially compete with the iPod. How one earth is one suppposed to know which is the newest (whithout knowing the rhetoric ). Philips is even worse. They call their iPod competitor the HDD120 and the Shuffle competitor HDD060. I dont have a freakin clue as to what the numbers stand for. I'm sure they have a meaning, but how on earth am I the consumer supposed to know the difference ? What about iRiver ? Well, their most expensive player, is the H340, which is 40 GB.The 20 GB version in that is the H320. I guess the last two digits stand for the capacity. Maybe 'H' stands for 'hot'? Their Shuffle-esque players are called the H10.
Maybe I'm bitching, but I do have a valid point. Hell, even if Creative /Philips/iRiver/everyone else made an MP3 player that had a 100 GB capacity, was the size of a credit card, cost ten bucks and could do everything , including mow your lawn, it would'nt gonna help them one bit if they named it HDD007, would it?
Note1 : I've only named the major brands.They're all the same.
Note2 : The post is on my blog at http://trenchier2.blogspot.com/2005/02/obscure-mp3-player-names.html
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