I think that has 2 reasons:

One reason is that the guys@empeg are working on such a project for quite a while now and it seems they have quite a lot of experience what the users want/need and try to realize that in their unit.

The other reason is that other companies begin to realize that mp3 is a cool thing and now try to make some quick money in throwing kind of cheap devices on the market as quick as possible without thinking about what will really meet the customers (or clients ) need. That's what it seems to be to me.

TeeMcBee