MPIO FL300 was already popular even before it came to the stores "on shelf". It was pre-ordered by so many people and was proposed by the movie "Daddy long legs" for product placement. Ha Ji-won, who plays the heroine of the movie, will be wearing Red MPIO FL300 in the movie.
MPIO FL300 comes in three varieties - 256MB, 512MB and 1GB. With built-in Li-Polymer battery, it lasts as long as 10 hours with 1 hour recharge via USB port. MPIO FL300 supports virtually all file formats such as MP3, WMA, and ASF. Users don't need any software thanks to its plug-and-play function, and it can be used on PC and Macintosh as well.
MPIO FG100 is a product with its design of "Boom Box" and sound of Philips. The front design of FG 100 looks like a stereo speakers and applied the concept of traditional audio such as dial volume controller while it still gives the look and feel of digital audio with its two color OLED display and the red ring that moves when the music is playing.
MPIO FG100 also comes in three varieties - 256MB, 512MB and 1 GB. Equipped with 1 AA battery, it lasts approximately 43 hours.
For both MPIO FL300 and FG100, the prices are 199,000 won (256MB), 259,000 won (512MB) and 299,000 won (1GB).
[Interview]
MP3 Player is Not an Electronic Device-It's a Fashion Item!
>>Plan to Announce 6 New Products in 2nd Half - Including Two Kinds of HDD Type Players
Q. What is the prime characteristic of your MP3 players
A. In our company, we don't say we sell MP3 products. We say, we sell "design" and "style." MPIO is the first company in the world who developed MP3 players and we have always focused on the design of our products. That's why we received several awards from world famous design competition such as CES Innovations Awards and IF Design award of Germany.
Q. Talking about fashion, does MPIO also execute various marketing activities in cooperation with fashion business Can you give a few examples
A. We provided MPIO products to fashion show such as designer Woo Young-mi (Solid Homme)'s fashion show held in Paris and designer Andre Kim's fashion show held in Korea. Also recently, for the first time in the market, we started to display our products at the show window of fashion stores in popular spots of Seoul including Myung-dong, Apgujung-dong, Doosan Tower, and we are getting good feedback from the stores and the customers.
Q. What are the future business plans of MPIO
A. Recently Digitalway merged with Yescom and registered to KOSDAQ. The company name of Yescom will be changed, as MPIO and MPIO will take care of design, sales & marketing, while Digitalway will take charge of R&D & production as the subsidiary of MPIO. So from now on, MPIO is the name of company as well as the name of products. Changing the company name the same as the product brand name means we will focus more on brand marketing. We launched a global PR program in 13 countries, and 6 new products will be announced in the second half of 2004, both in domestic market and overseas market. Among the 6 products, three are flash-memory MP3 players, one is USB storage, and two are hard-disk type MP3 players. It is noteworthy that we developed two kinds of hard-disk type MP3 players since we think the market will shift to hard-disk type MP3 players.