This past Thursday, Dell (Nasdaq:DELL) unveiled its consumer electronic products, just in time for the holiday shopping season. The lineup includes plasma televisions, new printers and a sleek personal digital music player targeting the same consumer segment as the iPod mini.

Obviously, the recent foray into consumer electronics is definitely indicative of Dell's strategy to continue to leverage its direct-sales model to sell a wider range of products.  But what about the $199 Dell Pocket DJ?  Can it take away some market share from Apple's iPod?  The new Pocket DJ has a nicer design than the older model, weighing 4.4 ounces and having a capacity of about 5 GB (good enough for about 2,500 songs).  Apple owns the digital music player market (using HDs as storage), with about 90 percent of the share.

What are the experts saying?  Om Malik had an interesting insight on his blog post, from Steve Milunovich (the Merrill Lynch strategy czar, whose opinion is definitely one of the most respected in Wall Street):

We believe the Dell's music devices will continue to have limited success.  Dell announced an iPod Mini competitor with the same user interface as the previous Dell Jukebox, which has not done that well.  Dell management said last spring that it intends to be patient in the MP3 market. The 5 GB Pocket DJ will sell for $199 versus Apple's 4 GB iPod Mini at $249.  The larger 20 GB DJ will go for $249 for versus the Apple's 4th generation 20 GB iPod at $299. The two biggest issues Dell customers have are viruses and integration.  Both play to the advantage of Apple.


Here are a couple of more interesting reviews at Gizmodo, my favorite gizmo review site: