D&M Holdings Inc., today announced it would exit the mass-market portable digital audio player business, currently marketed under the Rio brand, by September 30, 2005. D&M Holdings will retain the Rio brand and trademark, and as previously announced the company retains access via license to MP3 player technology that was sold in July to SigmaTel, Inc.
D&M Holdings Inc. is based in Tokyo and owns the Denon, Marantz, McIntosh Laboratory, D&M Professional, ReplayTV, Rio and Escient brands. All are established brands in premium home theater, audio-video consumer electronics, professional audio or networked digital entertainment markets.
The company’s decision to exit the Rio business followed a determination that the mass-market portable digital audio player market was not a strong enough strategic fit with the company’s core and profitable premium consumer electronics brands to warrant additional investment in the category. The original goal of strategic advantage with wholly-owned and branded portable client devices was reconsidered in the context of the costs required to effectively scale and compete in this sector, where competition has grown intense. D&M Holdings will now focus all its resources on the core Premium AV business and advanced content server products.
“The digital audio market is evolving in such a way that our competitive advantage will be to focus on creating premium home network products that are designed for compatibility with a variety of client devices and services,” said Vic Pacor, president of D&M Holdings in the press release.
D&M Holdings will continue to support retailers and customers of its Rio brand through all final sale and post-sales activities, including customer service, repair, warranty and sales channel support. D&M Holdings is committed to continuing service levels without compromise. Details of the financial impact of this plan are available in the company’s latest financial results that were released today.
It’s the natural order of things. Survival of the fittest and all that. First the weak go, then the not-so-weak. Apple’s iPod is turning out to be quite the real killer: “iPod Killer,” get it? That’s “Mr. iPod Killer” to you, bub. And we have a feeling that iPod’s about to go “serial” sooner than later.
Related articles:
Analyst: Apple will sell 7.1 million iPods this quarter – August 26, 2005
Apple’s iPod has blood on its Click Wheel: Virgin Electronics is dead – March 08, 2005
Rio MP3 player business sold to Apple iPod shuffle chip maker SigmaTel – July 28, 2005
Rio faces uphill struggle attempting to nibble at Apple’s iPod market dominance – December 02, 2004
Mossberg: Dell, Rio, Creative ‘iPod mini killers’ lag badly behind Apple iPod mini – October 27, 2004
Rio debuts 5GB ‘iPod mini killer’ – August 02, 2004
Couldn’t stand up to the iPod Juggernaut®.
D&M Holdings is getting out while the gettin’s good. See ya.
iPod, Killer
Rio means River in spanish. That’s exactly were they went, down river floating like a dead corpse. Who’s next!!!
Killer iPod strikes again.
I can just see it…all those bozo Windows apologists writing about iPod killers will soon be writing Killer iPod strikes the Dull DJ.
With any luck, Creative will be next.
Creative might not be on deck, yet. One of the smaller players probably is next, but Creative’s definitely in-the-hole.
There are probably more Rio players in the storage rooms of the dealers than in the hands of customers. These guys make great classical stereo equipment, but even there, the design stinks. Home stereo components still look the same as in the 80s, they are even back to silver fronts. I wonder when the VU meters will return.
Better yet…
With any luck, Microsoft will be the next to go.
…I love my iPod, but I’ve learned from years in the business that some competition is good. It pushes innovation, drives down pricing, and acts as an overall benefit to consumers. Just because we happen to love one particular product (and for VERY good reason) doesn’t mean that we should desire that all other products go away. I don’t predict that it will happen, and I don’t think we should really WANT it to.
That said, I understand why some of these products will disappear: poor user interface, lackluster integration with software (particularly for the techo-phobic and techno-ignorant), and an overall poor consumer experience. Yes, it will happen that some will go away, but let’s hope that it’s not at the price of total iPod domination. We should WANT Apple to have some healthy competition. We’ll all benefit from that (unless we’re stockholders, I suppose…).
Sadly Mike B, MS has too much money to be next. They’ll lose a lot of their influence and power (in addition to what they’ve already lost), but they’ll still be here to infect the industry.
I guess the plan to compete with Apple by supporting Microsoft’s format has not been the success they believed it would be. So much for their so-called iPod Mini killer.
First Snow White, now iRiver.
Tip: Do not bite the Apple
http://www.iriver.com/html/index.asp
Don’t get me wrong, you’re right. Competition is good (as we’ve witnessed from the OS situation we have today). That said, I have no sympathy for companies that go under because they lack a push to innovate their own products and only badmouth and hate on Apple because of their success with iPod (yes, I’m looking at you Creative (launching ‘wars’) and iRiver (pictures of people biting into Apples).
With this in mind, it is a shame that Rio was the company to go. Rio released the second MP3 player on the market – ever – and their products didn’t look like iPod wannabe clones. Not to mention the fact that they didn’t badmouth Apple every chance they got or do stupid things like launch ‘wars’.
We shouldn’t gloat too much – competition is good.
Still, an Apple monopoly is infinitely better than a Microsoft monopoly.
a moment of silence for the soon to be departed…
..
OK. Now turn the iPod back on. Keep on rocking.
Yeah! Great! Bring on the Apple monopoly so the iPod can become even more overpriced!
I have a Rio MP3 CD/am-fm player I got shortly before acquiring my first iPod. The Rio is a $179 piece of crap – ultra slow disc access and rotton (horrible) user interface. After two months of torture trying to use the Rio to play music in my van I bought the first of my three iPods. I would personally like to wish D&M holdings all the worst and I hope you lost plenty over this. Long live the King!
My only regret is that Rio did make the best non-Apple mp3 players out there. I would much rather see Creative or iRiver bite the dust than Rio, but this story proves that Apple’s dominance of the market is virtually total at this point. I’m sure B.G. is thrilled by today’s news that another “plays for sure” vendor is gone…
“Bring on the Apple monopoly so the iPod can become even more overpriced!”
Seeing as how they’re generally priced at or below their competition on a per GB basis, I truly fail to understand what in the hell you’re talking about…
Overpriced? For just a little more than a normal USB keychain memory module you can get one that includes iTunes? Long live the cheap simple iPod Shuffle.
Smart business move on their part. Being an also-ran in the low budget MP3 player market doesn’t fit with success and excellent reputation they have with the Denon and McIntosh brands.
I also agree with the others that gloating is inappropriate (but only if overdone). Without the dark sea of bad to mediocre portable players out their, the iPod would have nothing to shine against. When iPod is the only player around, we will all go deaf from the sounds of complaints about it.
That’s Karma for ya…
Cry me a iRio…
“The digital audio market is evolving in such a way that our competitive advantage will be to focus on creating premium home network products that are designed for compatibility with a variety of client devices and services,” said Vic Pacor, president of D&M Holdings in the press release.”
Now they can build ipod interoperability into their Denon receivers and partner with Apple instead of competing. That’ll probably make them more money in the long run than selling the rios ever did (shouldn’t be hard since they had to have LOST quite a bit on them).
“Now they can build ipod interoperability into their Denon receivers and partner with Apple instead of competing. That’ll probably make them more money in the long run than selling the rios ever did (shouldn’t be hard since they had to have LOST quite a bit on them).”
Too late. They already have products on the market.
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home/denon-smart-life-ipodlovin-home-cinema-system-118119.php
http://www.t3.co.uk/news/entertainment/home_cinema_system/denons_made_for_ipod_home_cinema_system