HP's Missed Opportunities In Portable MP3 Players

from the whoops dept

Someone over at the Register finds it amusing that HP had to go out and make a deal with Apple to repackage the iPod, since Compaq (who has since been bought by HP) pretty much invented portable, large-scale music players with their Personal Jukebox - a handheld music player with a 30 gig hard drive - in 1999. The article wonders if HP owns patents on the technology, and whether or not those played into Apple's decision to license them the iPod. Chances are that's not the case at all, and this is simply a situation where HP/Compaq simply missed a market, even though some of their own researchers clearly had a headstart.

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