Dell dumps DJ Ditty music player

IDG News Service - Dell's attempt to take a bite out of Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod has failed. The PC vendor has stopped selling its DJ Ditty music player on its Web site and has decided to cease development of its own music players, a company spokesman said yesterday.

When DJ Ditty was first announced last September, Dell had hoped that the player's monochrome display and support of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media Audio format would give it a leg up on the iPod Shuffle. Dell claimed that with the Windows media format, its player could hold nearly twice as many songs as a comparable iPod Shuffle.

However, the $99 player never caught on, and it was criticized as being hard to use.

Dell removed DJ Ditty from it's Web site Aug. 17, said Dell spokesman Venancio Figueroa. "We want to tighten our consumer product focus and we believe we can do that with PCs , TVs and printers," he said.

Dell will still sell music players, however, including those made by Sandisk Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Creative Technology Ltd. and IRiver America Inc.