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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Craig Freeman who wrote (5320)	4/9/1999 12:03:00 AM
From: Diamondhead	Respond to of 60323

If this keeps up I'll mortgage the house at $6/sh! Now that I'm out I'm looking for another buying opportunity. We'll see what tomorrow brings. Does anyone know what memory Creative's MP3 will have? I can't find spec.s anywhere. Creative readies MP3 player By Jim Davis Staff Writer, CNET News.com April 8, 1999, 5:30 p.m. PT The market for digital portable music players will get some added competition next week when Creative Labs announces a new MP3 player at next week's Spring Internet World. On Monday, Creative Labs will roll out its first MP3 player, said industry sources, joining a market currently dominated by Diamond Multimedia's Rio player. Creative Labs' device, dubbed the Nomad when a prototype player was first unveiled last month, will hold about an hour of near-CD quality music, which is twice what Diamond's player can store, said industry sources. The device, unlike the Rio, can also record voice memos and show the title of songs on a small LCD display. It is expected to cost less than $200, sources said. Users can download a growing supply of both legitimate and pirated music titles in the MP3 (MPEG-3) digital audio format from their PCs to their hard disk drive or an expanding array of newfangled portable music players storming the market. Do you want to know more? Read related news View story in The Big Picture Go to Message Boards Search News.com For Creative, the move is an effort to capitalize on the mushrooming interest in MP3 as intense competition in the market for graphics and sound subsystems gut the company's profits. Creative declined to comment. Diamond said recently it has already shipped over 100,000 units since the Rio's launch late last year, despite a messy legal battle with the recording industry, which was seeking an injunction against Rio's distribution until better safeguards against piracy were in place. Creative has long been one of the leaders in providing audio functions to the PC. Supporting MP3 is a natural, if not inevitable extension of their core business. At the same time, Creative has been hit hard by competition in the graphics and peripheral markets. Last June, the company warned that its fourth fiscal quarter 1998 earnings would be below expectations due to competition in both the 2D/3D chip market as well as the audio market. Since then, Creative has seen margins, and profits, tighten. For the first fiscal quarter of 1999, which ended last September, Creative reported lower revenues and profits. For the second fiscal quarter, which ended in December, the company saw a slight bump in revenue, but earnings were down once one-time charges were excluded.