Digital Home Thoughts: Dell No Longer Offering Ditty MP3 Player

"Last year, it was supposed to be the music player that was going to knock the iPod Shuffle out of the ball park, but now the DJ Ditty from Dell is no more. Dell, which is not having its most scintillating year, decided to cut its losses after watching the DJ Ditty get slaughtered by the Shuffle over 2006. Analysts have conjectured why the portable music player backed by a major hardware manufacturer such as Dell failed to make an impact in the market. The DJ Ditty was comparably priced to the iPod Shuffle at US$99 and it also had 512M of Flash RAM on board."

I'm not surprised - Dell is under pressure to increase revenue, and slashing product lines and cutting costs always makes those shareholders happy - at least for a while. I bought my wife Ashley (who reported this news to me interestingly enough!) a Ditty last Christmas and she really enjoys using it - but I can see why the average consumer would pick a Shuffle instead, especially since Apple has retail presence and Dell does not. Farewell Ditty!