One of the main competitors to Apple’s iPod music player today announced it was ending development of its flavor of mp3 devices. The Rio line, owned by a company called D&M Holdings, is being closed down because the business is no longer to its ‘competitive advantage’.
“The digital audio market is evolving in such a way that our competitive advantage will be to focus on creating premium home network products that are designed for compatibility with a variety of client devices and services,” said Vic Pacor, president of D&M Holdings. D&M Holdings will continue to support retailers and customers of its Rio brand through all final sale and post-sales activities, including customer service, repair, warranty and sales channel support
The holding company, which also produces the Marantz and Denon lines of high-end audio-visual products along with other assorted brands in related markets, is keeping the Rio trademark and name, but is selling the intellectual property they’ve developed to the chip company SigmaTel, netting an ‘extraordinary gain’ of approximately 7 million USD. As was widely rumored prior to launch, the Apple iPod Shuffle contains a SigmaTel audio decoder chip.
ZDNet: The day Rio’s music died
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