Dell Dumps the DJ Ditty

Dell's attempt to take a bite out of Apple Computer's iPod has failed.

The PC vendor has stopped selling its DJ Ditty music player on its Web site and has decided to cease development of its own music players, a company spokesman said Wednesday.

When DJ Ditty was first announced last September, Dell had hoped that the player's monochrome display and support of Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format would give it a leg up on the iPod Shuffle.

Dell claimed that with the Windows media format, the player could hold nearly twice as many songs as a comparable iPod Shuffle.

Never Caught On

However, the $99 player never caught on, and it was criticized as being hard to use.

Dell removed DJ Ditty from its Web site on August 17, said Dell spokesman Venancio Figueroa.

"We want to tighten our consumer product focus and we believe we can do that with PCs , TVs, and printers," he said.

Dell will still sell music players, however, including those made by Sandisk, Samsung Electronics, Creative Technology, and IRiver America.