New Crop of Portable Player Designs

In the past month, five companies have unveiled their latest iPod challengers portable music players with hard disks that can store anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 songs.

There's Dell Inc.'s new Pocket DJ, Virgin Electronics' Player, Creative Labs Inc.'s Zen Micro, iRiver America Inc.'s H300, and Archos Inc.'s Gmini XS200.

"Everyone is trying to get a bite out of Apple's piece of the pie," said Susan Kevorkian, analyst at market research firm IDC.

But Apple always has more tricks up its sleeves.

Many analysts expect the Cupertino-based company to introduce an iPod upgrade Tuesday at an invite-only event featuring the rock band U2.

There's speculation it could be a new iPod with a color screen and a larger 60-gigabyte capacity equipped to handle photos and video; a special U2 edition; or one based on flash memory instead of a hard disk, giving it far less capacity but a more affordable price.

Apple was not the first to introduce a high-capacity hard-disk portable music player Archos was. But Apple's its October 2001 launch of the sleek, white iPod defined the market.

Today, Apple rules the field, riding high with a gizmo that's both fashion chic and a cultural icon.

The company sold a record 2 million units in its last quarter ending in September and has a lifetime total of more 5.7 million. Brisk b

more: abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=196668 (45)

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