"Capacity is going up. We launched about a year ago with five gigabyte drives... single platter five gigabytes... we then added ten gigabytes... now twenties and soon we'll be increasing that even further."
The drives are used in Apple's popular iPod digital music players. That's what has been driving sales... says Brzeski... .
"Music is definitely today's application... but we already have companies that are looking at video... pocket based portable video players."
Sonic Blue has announced it be marketing a pocket version of its RePlay TV for instance. On the music side... Toshiba has its own digital player with a unique design...
"What I have here is a Toshiba MobilePhile. This is an MP3 player which is designed to have the disc removable. And it's also upgradeable as we continue to increase the capacity on these drives."
The device uses a fast USB 2.0 connection. You do pay for the new features... though. The 5 gigabyte model sells for about four hundred dollars. That's about the same price as a 10 gigabyte Apple iPod or a20 gigabyte Nomad Jukebox from Creative Labs... without removable drives. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.