What technology is hotter than the sand at your local beach? Portable digital audio. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. According to a study conducted by Harris Interactive for Sony Electronics... more than half of the 15 to 35 year olds in the U.S. say they plan to purchase a digital music device over the next year. And Sony Senior VP Mark Viken says the trend has helped to revive Sony's MiniDisc format... with its Net MD devices...

"MiniDisc worldwide is a fantastic success for Sony and continues to build momentum here in the U.S It's taken a little longer than we'd like in the U.S. but it's doing very well and we have the number one and number two market position for MiniDisc in the digital music player market so we're very, very happy about that."

A new agreement with PressPlay will allow songs downloaded from the for pay service to be saved to MiniDisc. We should point out that Sony Music on the other hand... .has been in the forefront of the battle against music piracy... .and used technology to block digital copying of some CDs. Another consumer electronics company that is expanding its digital music player line is RCA. It is introducing new Lyra Jukebox models. Sebastian Manelc of RCA's advanced audio group...

"The ten gig is available now at 249 dollars and the 20 gig version will be available in August at 299."

The 20 gigabyte model for under three hundred dollars... is two hundred dollars less than Apple's top of the line iPod... with double the storage. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.