Dell announced that they are planning on launching its own legal music download service as well as launching their own digital-audio players and flat-panel TVs. They had discussions with numerous record companies and expect to have a broad selection of music. Their digital audio player product will be branded "Dell Digital Jukebox", but they have not given any specifications. Their flat-panel 17-inch TV doubles up as a computer monitor also. The advantage would be to allow watching TV
on the monitor without requiring the computer to be switched on.
Dell expects to have all of these new products to be in time for the holidays, but is not revealing any prices on their items or music.
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"We're expanding our lineup ... even as our primary computer systems business continues to be profitable in every segment," Dell Chief Executive Michael Dell said during a conference call. Mr. Dell said all of the new products will be available in time for the holidays, although he declined to reveal pricing. He also didn't disclose details regarding the company's planned music service, including the number of songs that will be available for download and the record labels involved.
Dell's push to sell more consumer products follows the lead of competitors, such as Gateway Inc. and Apple Computer Inc., as overall growth in computer sales has slowed. Gateway, for instance, recently has been successful selling large plasma- screen televisions, while Apple launched its own online music service earlier this year. Dell's overt nods toward the consumer space have included branded personal digital assistants that it began selling last year, as well as a more recent move to sell branded, low-cost computer printers. But the company's announcement Thursday - which had been the subject of rampant speculation over the past week - marks a significantly stepped-up consumer effort. |
It will be interesting to see what specifications and pricing they will have for their Flat-panel TV, digital music players and their download music service. For several months, they have lagged behind a little with their PC product specifications, for example Dell had only increased its standard RAM from 256MB to 512MB after a good majority of competitors already had 512MB of RAM as standard in their new PCs.
With a wide range of music download services on the Internet, Dell will also need to find to have something to encourage consumers to choose them. They have not mentioned if purchased downloads can be burned to CD, transferred to MP3 players or even transferred to their own brand of portable music players. Currently, Apple's iTunes download service despite being a Macintosh only product has been proved very successful and have served over 10 million downloads. It does show that a legal music download service is possible without having to kill off file sharing services or alienate consumers that download MP3s, as long as they provide what the consumer is looking for. ;)
Source: Yahoo Financial News
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