- Iriver is a South Korean electronics company known for digital audio players. It was founded in 1999 by former Samsung executives. - The company's MP3 player business declined as the iPod and smartphones rose in popularity, leading to financial losses in the late 2000s. - Iriver players support formats like MP3 and WMA and features include FM radio, audio recording, and adjustable equalizers.

1. - Is a consumer Electronics Company headquartered in
South Korea and widely known for its digital audio players and other portable media
devices.
The company is a brand and marketing division of iriver Inc, a South
Korean electronics and entertainment company founded in 1999 by seven
former Samsung executives.
South Korean private equity firm Vogo Fund has held a major stake in iriver from 2007
to 2014, working to improve the company's prospects as its MP3 player business has
dwindled.
History
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, California,
while keeping R&D in-house.
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.[11] The company also announced plans
for digital audio players featuringInternet telephony.
The dominance of Apple’s iPod and iPhone, the decline of MP3 players and the rise of
smartphones have challenged iriver’s business. In 2006, the company had sales of
149.5 billion won and an operating loss of 54.4 billion won. The next year, Vogo Fund
bought a large stake in iriver, which reported 5.5 billion won in profits on 206.8 billion
won of sales. Deep losses followed in 2009 and 2010.

2. 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. It also lets users disable its DRM functionality.
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 support 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.
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. The option was designed to help people listening to recorded language
lessons. SonicBlue removed this feature from its Rio Volt models, causing some users
to hack their players with iriver firmware from other regions.
Example
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.

3. -Was a brand of digital media products and services
marketed by Microsoft. Zune included a line of portable media players, digital media
player software for Windows PCs, a music subscription service known as a "Zune
Music Pass", music and video streaming services for the Xbox 360 game console
via the Zune Software, music, TV and movie sales, and desktop sync software
for Windows Phone. Zune also provided music streaming for United Airlines inflight
after a partnership in 2010.
The Zune Marketplace was an online store that offered music, podcasts, TV shows,
movies, music videos, movie trailers and mobile applications. Content can be
viewed or purchased on Windows PCs with the Zune software installed, Zune
devices, the Xbox 360, the Microsoft Kin phones, orWindows Phone phones.
History
Zune music and devices were follow-on to Microsoft's MSN Music service. MSN
Music was created in 2004 to compete with Apple's iTunes services. After only two
years, Microsoft announced the closing of MSN Music in 2006 immediately before
announcing the Zune service. In 2008 Microsoft shut down the MSN Music licensing
servers only two years after promising users the servers would be available for five
years.
The First generation
Zune device was created by Microsoft in close cooperation with Toshiba, which took
the design of the Gigabeat S and redeveloped it under the name Toshiba 1089 as
registered with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) starting in
2006. Xbox 360 overseer J Allard ran the project, codenamed "Argo", staffed
with Xbox andMSN Music Store developers who worked on "Alexandria", finalized
as Zune Marketplace. Both products were later united under the Zune brand name
in the U.S. market.

4. The second generation
Zune 4, 8, and 80 devices, manufactured by Flextronics, introduced the touch-
sensitive Zune Pad, which was shaped like a squircle. The 4 and 8 GB Zune devices
use flash memory and are smaller in size than the 80 GB version, which uses a hard
drive. The 30 GB Zune was not redesigned, although it received a software update
that brought its interface in line with the second generation models. At the same
time, the Zune 2.0 software was released for Windows PCs. This version of the
software was completely re-written and featured a new user interface.
Third generation
The third-generation Zune 16 and 120 devices were released in September 2008,
coinciding with the release of the Zune Software 3.0 update. The only changes to
this generation of devices were to the firmware, which was made available for all
previous models, and the storage capacity. Included in this firmware update was the
ability to tag and later purchase songs heard on FM radio, channels which can be
customized to deliver suggested songs for the user, the games Hexic and Texas
Hold' em, support for audiobooks from online stores such as Audible.com and others
that support OverDrive media files, a clock, and changed quicklist functionality.
Availability
Zune Marketplace was originally only available in the United States. In October
2010, certain Zune Marketplace content became available in additional countries:
the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, the
Netherlands, Switzerland, Mexico, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. However,
not all content was available in all countries; for example, podcasts and TV shows
were not offered at all outside the United States.
Example