Sony's line of Ipod killers the "A series"

Sony Japan has announced 5 models to it's latest A series. The NW-A3000 has a storage capacity of 20 Gb and the NW-A1000 of 6 GB. Flash memory based NW-A608, NW-A607 and NW-A605 come in capacities of 2 GB, 1 GB and 512 MB respectively. The hard drive based A3000 and A1000 have a streamlined and sleek body with a large organic EL display and have innovative features like Artist link and intelligent shuffle which randomly plays the 100 most listened to songs or random songs from a particular time frame. The HDD based players also have "G sensor" which when activated detects free fall and instantly moves the head away from the hard drive, there is also shock resistant damper which protects the hard drive from impact. The players connect to the PC via high speed USB 2.0 and use Sony's proprietary "Connect" software to transfer and organize files. The Flash based players also have FM tuners which is absent in Hard drive based players. Playback is limited to MP3 and ATRAC3plus. (WMA functionality will be added with a firmware upgrade in December) They will be on shelves in mid November. The Flash based players will be available in Japan only.