That is the one thing that the big players have....they are less likely to EOL thier products

Do you have any idea how funny that statement sounds? Most electronics companies like Matsushita and Sony have product lifetimes which barely outlast a given holiday shopping season.

The only thing you're noticing is that there's always a whole line of CD players, or a whole line of TV's, or a whole line of DVD players, from a given company. True, but a given specific model of a specific product might only be manufactured for a couple of months until it gets replaced by the next model.

Whether or not that particular HDD-based music player gets rolled into a full product line or not remains to be seen. But that particular model will definitely be EOL'ed faster than the Empeg was.