Just after Apple's recent announcement of reaching 100 million iPod sales since the first iPod launched back in November 2001, SanDisk has unveiled its latest Sansa Connect player, which allows one to transfer music wirelessly to the player through a Wi-Fi network from their PC. The player also features the ability to connect to the Yahoo music service where consumers can download music directly from Yahoo using their unlimited subscription service. While Microsoft has pulicised heavily about Zune's wireless music transfer, the Zune only allows music to be transferred from one Zune to another (with restrictions) and not from the PC to the Zune.
Going by the technology research firm NPD, SanDisk is currently 2nd in the MP3 player market at 9%, with Apple currently accounting for about 74% of the US retail market. So far Apple's own iTunes store has sold over 2.5 billion songs, 50 million TV shows and 1.3 million movies. However, even though Yahoo offers unlimited transfers to the new Sansa for a flat-rate subscription, all music downloaded as part of the subscription will no longer work if the customer stops paying their subscription. Even though iTunes has yet to offer a subscription service, so far they have made a deal with EMI to release high quality (256Kbps) DRM-free tracks, where consumers can keep their music and can easily convert it to play on any player of their choice (such as this SanDisk player) without the legal issue of breaking copy protection restrictions.
Further info about this SanDisk Sansa can be viewed on SanDisk's product page.
