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It's not a rebadged Gigabeat. It's a new device that may share some internal design elements with the GB, but that's becides the point. These products are mostly defined by their software not hardware.

It was my understanding that Toshiba wrote the software. It is more Gigabeat than not Gigabeat. Perhaps I'm mistaken but my source should definitely know what it's talking about in this case.

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Apple's players are made by Foxconn and others and their computers are all in the same boat - Apple have no manufacturing facilities of their own.

That's an irrelevent comparison, we're not talking about contract manufacturing, we're talking about product development. The more accurate parallel to draw would have been that PortalPlayer developed much of the iPod firmware for Apple. There's no question that in both the Zune and iPod examples the brand owner controlled the design and contributed technology. However I strongly suspect that at that stage Apple have developed a far greater percentage of the iPod software than Microsoft have developed for the Zune.

Rob