Real and Sandisk Partner on Devices and Services - First Take

Michael Gartenberg | September 18, 2006, 10:55 AM

When Microsoft announced Zune, substituting a closed eco-system and providing an end to end solution, we expected other folks to follow suit and leave the Plays for Sure fold to go their own way. We’ve already seen Nokia purchase Loudeye and today REAL announced a partnership with Sandisk to brand a Sansa player and seamlessly integrate that device in the Rhapsody service via Rhapsody DNA.

It’s a good move on the part of REAL and like last week’s announcement with Sonos, changes the nature of the Rhapsody argument in a pretty compelling way. They key for REAL is going to be educating the market on the benefits of a subscription service and the ability to take the service beyond the PC. At the moment there’s Apple. Sony, Microsoft, Nokia and Real. I’d expect to see at least one more player by year end and that’s just too many folks that aren’t well differentiated from each other for the market to bear.