Update on the $50 Microsoft iPod: Denver Post bungles story

Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, will begin selling portable music players for as much as 80 percent less than Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod.

The Microsoft-branded devices will "look and feel" as good as the iPod for as little as $50, said Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of MSN at Microsoft Corp., at the Goldman Sachs fifth annual Internet Conference in Las Vegas. The iPod sells for $249 to $499.

Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., will release a number of music players when it launches its online music service later this year, giving customers more choices than Apple, Mehdi said.

I've spent time with a bunch of hardware manufacturers who will launch hardware products when we ship our service that will look and feel as good as the iPod product. And they will undoubtedly be a little bit less expensive and so head-to-head against Apple we'll have a device that will be available to the consumer. We won't produce it but it will be available to the consumer. We gave a lot of input. And then we'll have a bunch of other devices, some that we've already talked about, one the Portable Media Center, which is a device that's a little bit bigger and a little more expensive that has video and audio, much higher end looking device. It's for people who really want to sort of look at music videos and not just music, which is very powerful, we'll have that offering. And then a bunch of devices in between, little ones that cost 50 bucks and you can go running with.