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Gateway Takes on Apple

Techstination feature for Thursday, November 4, 2004

Gateway takes on Apple. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Those iPod digital music players have become a big part of Apple's business over the last couple of years. Gateway is hoping it can share in that kind of success. Days after Apple announced iPods with color screens that can store and show digital photos….Gateway announced its MP3 Photo Jukebox. Gateway's senior manager of convergence John Schindler…

"It's a 1.6 inch color screen. It has photo capabilities too, so you can view your favorite photos, or you can download your photos from your digital camera. So if you go on vacation, you point and click, and you run out of space on your digital camera, you simply download those digital files. We also are offering a brand new service from Napster. We're offering one month of new Napster to go service."

After the first month, that service costs about 15 dollars a month. The Gateway NP3 Photo Jukebox is small…weighs less than 3 and a half ounces…has 4 gigabytes of capacity…and sells for about 250 dollars. That's half the price….but just one tenth the storage of one of the new iPods. But Schindler says…

"Well it stores a thousand songs. And we think for an average user, a thousand songs is probably enough. There are some customers that will like the larger capacity products, and we are also looking at that market for sometime next year."

One other feature Gateway has added…is a removable battery. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.