Sony targets iPod with MP3 player

Available from the end of November, they will hold music in Sony's proprietary ATRAC3plus format and, for the first time, MP3 files.

The move is a radical one from a firm which has been dogged about pushing its proprietary ATRAC technology.

The 1GB NW-E99 will retail for around £170 pounds, while slightly cheaper NW-E95 holds a 512 megabytes, and will only be available in Europe.

The devices feature 70 hours of battery life, and weigh in at a slim 40 grams. The two models come with built-in memory of 512MB and 1GB respectively. Sony claims this is the equivalent of up to 46 CD’s on the larger NW-E99 player using the ATRAC3plus compression format.

The players are smaller in memory and more expensive than the iPod Mini. But Sony is playing up the longer battery life of the new players in comparison to the Apple iPod Mini, against which the new models are pitched. Battery life is a key feature purchasers of music players look for.

Meanwhile Apple said to be also developing a player with flash memory, which unlike the normal iPod requires no hard drive and thus no moving parts. Until recently Flash memory players were more expensive to produce in volume than hard-drive based models, but flash players are catching up in features, pricing and memory capacity.

Earlier this year Sony launched it's Sony Connect music store which vastly trails market leader Apple iTunes.