Windows Phone Thoughts: Microsoft To Unveil iPod "Competitors" At CES?

"And later this week, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft is expected to give new details about a line of portable devices that, in the view of some analysts, could give the popular iPod an extra measure of competition. The hand-held devices, called Portable Media Centers, will store and play back video, music and photos. Microsoft unveiled a prototype at last year's Consumer Electronics Show, under the code name Media2Go. The company had originally hoped to see at least one of the devices on the market during the recent holiday season, but the first release is now expected in the second half of this year."



I hadn't see a picture of a sample Portable Media Center unit before, and I have to say, it looks pretty impressive. On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether this will take off -- I can't tell from the picture, but it might be large and unwieldy. In order for it not to be confused with a PDA, it has to be very focused on multimedia capabilities, and more importantly, simple and easy-to-use. The iPod delivers both in spades... and iTunes is an amazingly easy-to-use yet powerful program with decent DRM policies. It seems that portable media players are shaping up to be the next battlefront for consumer dollars.