BenQ exiting MP3 player market?
Another one bites the dust? Unless you're Apple, it's apparently been a bad year for makers of MP3 players (or at least name-brand MP3 players — random Korean and Chinese companies keep popping up like crazy). Creative's profits are down, earlier this month Olympus announced they were pulling out of the market, while both Rio and NHJ Japan went out of business altogether, now it looks like BenQ might be dropping out of the biz as well. They haven't yet officially confirmed this, but Digitimes (which admittedly isn't always that accurate) is reporting that BenQ is getting ready to withdraw from its home market in Taiwan because of stiff competition from the iPod. Whether or not they'll continue selling their Joybee line of DAPs overseas isn't mentioned, but abandoning your home market usually isn't an encouraging move. Either way, Digitimes says that from now on BenQ is going to focus its efforts on musicphones.
[Via I4U]
