Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Chris Bernard

Dell is currently testing a new Wi-Fi enabled digital music player, with the aim of launching the new product as soon as this fall.

As the Wall Street Journal's Justin Scheck notes, this isn't Dell's first shot at the iPod market. "Dell first entered the music market in 2003 with a line of MP3 players that let users buy music from a variety of Web sites," he writes. "But sales were disappointing. When Dell stopped making music players in 2006, its U.S. market share remained below 3%."

"What's different this time around?" asks BusinessWeek's Arik Hesseldahl. "Well, last year, Dell acquired a little music software outfit called Zing which in 2006 was demonstrating a concept design that essentially put Wi-Fi streaming inside a portable player, thus giving it the ability to, among other things, play sirius streams.
Sound familiar? Well yeah, actually. My very favorite thing to do with the iPod touch is to listen to streams from Pandora and Last.fm..."

The Motley Fool's Rick Aristotle Munarriz is far from optimistic. "Dell is either a glutton for punishment or somehow banged its head on a rock and suffered insomnia from 2003 to 2006 when its first player crashed and burned. No matter what Dell's sorry excuse, I just hope it doesn't blow through too much money in its second attempt to jab at Apple's windmills. Prove me wrong, Dell..."

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