"Anytime you're in a hotspot, you can download music. You need to be a subscriber to Yahoo Music of course. But you can recommend that music to anybody else who is also a subscriber. And that can be somebody across the other side of the world. Apple has not had a WiFi product. Microsoft has the Zune, which we think is very, very inferior to the Sansa Connect.
Using the Yahoo Music Unlimited service...costs 15 dollars a month. The neatly designed player...comes with 4 gigabytes of memory...and a microSD expansion slot. What's missing? WiFi synching of songs you have ripped to your PC. And the 250 dollar price...seems high in comparison with other players... including the iPod and Zune...which offer a lot more capacity for a similar price. Says SanDisk GM Daniel Schreiber....
"In terms of the price, the feedback we've got both in focus groups and since the product has launched, is that people find the price compelling. The 249 price is a popular pricepoint for high end MP3 players. And it will be competing with players that have far less functionality."
Besides music, the Sansa Connect lets users view photos stored on Yahoo's Flickr service as well. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.