New Sony F series

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Spotify, Rhapsody, iTunes Match, Pandora, Google Play, Zune Marketplace, Amazon Cloud Drive, Sony Music Unlimited...see where I'm going with this? Ten bucks a month or less and you can access millions of songs anytime you can connect to the 'net. Heck, I know people that wouldn't know a gigabyte if it bit them that stream their music from home to their phone using easy to install apps.

The greatest majority of people I know have headed in this direction and given up the idea of having massive on board storage. The 8 GB on their phone is more than they usually use. I won't say the people I know are representative of all music listeners but the last few times I asked someone about a mp3 player they pulled out their phone. A couple of years ago that would have been an iPod.

I don't know how many thousands of sales it would take for Sony to make a profit on high capacity DAPs and PMPs but it wouldn't be a small number. Getting any big box chain to carry a DAP or PMP that costs several hundred dollars would be tough, if you could arrange that at all. Supply lines have to be set up months in advance. Just the changes to shipping and in store security would probably be enough to not make it worthwhile for any major retailer.

I'm not making excuses for Sony. I'm just saying what I see happening in around me. It seems they should be able to create an pipeline through their online stores for those players you can't buy in the brick and mortar stores. They would probably have to charge a hefty premium and limit returns. There may be some type of regulatory barrier or they just don't have vision to see how they could jump start sales in other areas, idk.