Toshiba Gigabeat U-Series Available in 24 colors

You thought the Zune team was going crazy by releasing the Zune in six different colors? Check this out! The latest MP3 player from Toshiba, the Gigabeat U103, will be available in 24 different colors, ranging from black to pink. This will be a real inventory nightmare at retail locations. If you really want to have a specific color, you better buy this MP3 player online.

Don’t you think that this multiple color trend is going too far? After the Zen, Dell’s laptop computers, Zune and now Toshiba. How many colors would be reasonable? 3, 10, 50, unlimited?

The player goes on sale today in Japan with a retail cost of around $113US.

Still interested in the features of the audio only player? Here they are:

Second Generation Zune Confirmed by Microsoft

Jason Reindorp, Microsoft's marketing director for Zune, confirmed the release of the second generation Zune for this fall.

The second generation Zune will be built by a Chinese partner located in Doumen in China. The same city where the Xbox is manufactured. This also means that Microsoft dumped Toshiba as the hardware supplier.

The information was not confirmed by Microsoft, but Flextronics (picture above) would be the best fit since they're already the Xbox's manufacturer in Doumen. The company already has 1,948,930 ft² of manufacturing space in Doumen only. Quite a lot more than what is needed to manufacture the Zune!

Reindorp said the company hopes that by taking a more direct role in manufacturing a second version, it will help the device gain popularity.

"There are definitely some cost efficiencies, but the more important thing from our perspective is the flexibility and control we have in creating a device from scratch and making it down to the last component what we want it to be," Reindorp added.

Jason Reindorp did not reveal any details of the new upcoming Zune players. Let's hope we are going to know a lot more in June!

Last update on May 16th, 2007