iriver

iriver (formerly iRiver) is a brand and division of ReignCom, manufacturer of digital audio players and other portable products. They typically include USB mass storage, or the Media Transfer Protocol, multiple codecs, FM tuners, recording capabilities, and upgradeable firmware. Headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, iriver is the consumer electronics marketing arm of ReignCom, a company founded in 1999 by seven former Samsung executives.[1]

Contents

History

Previous logo

In 1999, Duk-Jun Yang and Rae-Hwan Lee left Samsung Electronics, along with five colleagues. They formed ReignCom, with Yang as CEO, originally as a semiconductor distributor, then decided to capitalize on the growing MP3 player market. They decided to outsource manufacturing to AV Chaseway, located in Shenzhen, China, and contract product design to INNO Design, an industrial design company in Palo Alto, CA, while keeping R&D in-house.[1]

Their first iriver product was the iMP-100, a portable CD player capable of decoding MP3 data files on CDs, released in November, 2000. It and a later model, the iMP-250, were rebranded and sold by SonicBlue in the United States under the Rio Volt name. Iriver sold later models with its own SlimX brand, billing them as the thinnest MP3 CD players in the world,[2] before jumping to other types of players. The company rose to the No. 1 position in the global market, before being displaced by the iPod's introduction.[3]

In 2002, iriver scrambled to develop its first flash memory player to meet demand from the U.S. Best Buy chain. A year later, it was first to market with 512 MB and 1 GB players,[4] and completed its IPO at KOSDAQ, a Korean stock exchange.[5] By this time, the company was also selling hard drive players to compete with the iPod. It also used adult film star Jenna Jameson[6] and an Audrey Hepburn lookalike[7] as spokesmodels promoting its products.

iriver adopted a new marketing strategy in 2005, attempting to grab mindshare from Apple. It referred to the U10 flash player as the thumb thing. This referred to users controlling their MP3 devices with their thumbs, just as they do their cell phones and text messaging devices.[8] The company also announced plans for digital audio players featuring Internet telephony.[9]

iriver's U.S. unit, based in Vancouver, WA, held 3.4% of the U.S. MP3 player market in 2005, according to IDC. The company targets early adopters among American users as it tries to regain dominance of the category.[10] It also opened sales divisions in Brazil, Germany, Hong Kong and Japan.

ReignCom announced in May, 2006 that it would adjust its focus toward handheld mobile gaming.[11] It has also reported sluggish sales for its music player business,[12] including a loss of 35.58 billion won (US$36.68 million) in 2005, compared with a net profit of 43.46 billion won in 2004.[13] ReignCom also owns the Korean-language Yurion and Funcake entertainment services.

In its South Korean home market, iriver accounts for 50% of sales[14] and the company has bought ads claiming its products are a symbol of patriotism.[15] It also operates a small chain of iriver Zone stores, with locations in Korea, Japan, and China. The Incheon International Airport shop features a large heart-shaped art piece, which represents the corporate "Heartbeat Philosophy" of "dedication to its customers."[16]

In May, 2007, Reigncom announced a new division, Reigncom USA, to manage the iriver brand in the United States and help develop new products.[17] The company also bought the Siren brand in Japan from A-MAX Japan, despite protests from Siren Inc. itself.[18]

Product Features

iriver's current products can all play MP3 and WMA audio files. Some units support text viewing, Ogg Vorbis audio files, Macromedia Flash, and/or BMP files. The company also supports Microsoft PlaysForSure, which allows recent products to support subscription-based music download services, including URGE, Napster, Rhapsody, and Yahoo! Music Unlimited.[19] It also lets users disable its DRM functionality.[20]

A nearly unique feature of the newer iriver players is the direct MP3-recording capability with selectable bitrate of internal (FM, microphone) and external (line) sources.

Many players supports multilingual display in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. They support Winamp playlists and allow repeat, shuffle play, and programmable functions. Several preset and one user-defined EQ settings are included, plus a built-in FM tuner.[21]

Most iriver players include a unique feature called study mode. Users can quickly jump back and forth within tracks by a certain time interval, set from three to 180 seconds in current models.[22] The option was designed to help people listening to recorded language lessons.[23] SonicBlue removed this feature from its Rio Volt models, causing some users to hack their players with iriver firmware from other regions.[24]

Mobile Internet Device (MID) / UMPC

Wing

iRiver Wing introduced at Consumer Electronics Show January 2008.[25][26] (photos).

Portable Music Players

iriver H340

iriver makes Hard drive, Flash and portable media players. All hard drive and flash players play WMA, MP3, and OGG files and have FM tuners unless stated otherwise.

Hard disk based players

Current

iriver p10 (p.ple): 33GB memory, with touch screen. It has .pdf, .doc, and .hwp support, as well as a built-in PDA feature.

iriver clix3 will have the same 1.3" 33GB hard drive used in the p10, manufactured by Samsung Electronics.

Discontinued

Flash memory based players

Current

512 MB iriver t10
iriver Clix gen 2

Discontinued

iriver H10 Jr.
iriver iFP-799

European customers should be aware that several models are missing the FM Radio functionality available in other world markets.

Iriver initially dropped UMS support for the U10, T30, T20 & T10 models in favor of Microsoft's MTP. The company later released an official Firmare Updater[28] that allows users to switch between the MTP and UMS interfaces (for some models except 256 MB and 2 GB ones). The updater will only connect to the player from Windows XP SP1 or above.

Although the T10 2 GB version distributed in the US and Canada does not officially support such firmware, the European version does. There is currently ongoing discussion on the misticriver forums to port this firmware for use on the US version.

Portable media players

Current

Discontinued

The U10 and Clix can also play Flash Lite 1.1 games in the .swf format.

Korea-only electronic dictionary player

Alternative firmware

For more details on this topic, see Rockbox.
The Rockbox logo

Rockbox is a free and open source firmware, released under the GPL license. Among others, it supports iriver H10, H100 and H300 series. Features included are:

The above features are subject to the platform limitations. Rockbox may lack some features of the official firmware (for example support for DRM-covered music) and may considerably change the player interface. Depending on the manufacturer and reseller, usage of Rockbox may actually void player warranty.

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Outsourcing Strategy of Reigncom, the MP3 Player Corporation". Retrieved on 2007-05-13.
  2. ↑ "iriver Company Introduction". Retrieved on 2007-05-13.
  3. ↑ 'Innovation became part of our lifestyle' THE KOREA HERALD September 15, 2005
  4. ↑ "Korea's ReignCom: Moving Up The MP3 Charts". Retrieved on 2007-05-13.
  5. ↑ "iriver unveils the H10 [5GB colour]". Retrieved on 2007-05-13.
  6. ↑ "iriver Ad". Retrieved on 2008-11-30.
  7. ↑ [1]
  8. ↑ "ReignCom Unveils MP3 Players." Korea Times, June 21, 2005.
  9. ↑ "Telecoms Korea News Service" (registeration required). Telecomskorea.com. Retrieved on 2008-11-30.
  10. ↑ "iRiver banks on Clix". Retrieved on 2007-05-13.
  11. ↑ "iRiver On The Rocks". Retrieved on 2007-05-13.
  12. ↑ "Big Quarterly Losses for Reigncom". Retrieved on 2007-05-13.
  13. ↑ MP3 player maker ReignCom swings to loss in 2005. Yonhap, February 28, 2006
  14. ↑ [2]
  15. ↑ "iRiver's strategy against Apple: Buy Korean!". Retrieved on 2007-05-13.
  16. ↑ "Grand Opening of iriver zone at Incheon Int'l airport". Retrieved on 2007-05-13.
  17. ↑ "Reigncom Ltd (060570.KQ) Key Developments | Stocks | Reuters.com". Stocks.us.reuters.com. Retrieved on 2008-10-27.
  18. ↑ "Siren Inc. Defends Against Unauthorized Sale of Siren Brand in Japan". San Jose, Calif.: Siren (June 1, 2007). Retrieved on {{subst:#time:Y-m-d}}.
  19. ↑ [3]
  20. ↑ Posted by Cory Doctorow, May 26, 2006 5:02 PM. "iRiver gives customers the choice of switching off DRM - Boing Boing". Boingboing.net. Retrieved on 2008-10-27.
  21. ↑ "iRiver America Announces Next Generation MP3 CD Player" (PDF). Retrieved on 2007-05-13.
  22. ↑ "Study mode explained! - MisticRiver :: For iriver Enthusiasts". Misticriver.net. Retrieved on 2008-10-27.
  23. ↑ [4]
  24. ↑ "RioVolt SP90/100/250 FAQ". Geocities.com. Retrieved on 2008-10-27.
  25. ↑ "iriver Showcases Linux Based UMPC | LinuxElectrons". Linuxelectrons.com. Retrieved on 2008-10-27.
  26. ↑ "CES 2008: iRiver Wing UMPC - SlashGear". Slashgear.com. Retrieved on 2008-10-27.
  27. ↑ The term gigabyte (GB) has two possible meanings. Sometimes it means 10003 B (one billion bytes) and sometimes it means 10243 B (one gibibyte). The manufacturer does not specify which of the two is intended.
  28. ↑ "iriver Firmware Updater".

External links

Official iriver