After many stalled attempts at releasing a new MP3 player under the Rio brand name, D&M Holdings announced that it would no longer compete in the digital audio player market. The fact is that their portable audio division no longer fits into their business strategy and core competencies.
While a lot of RIO fans may be disappointed but from business perspective this is a smart move. D&M Holdings is a conglomerate of several very strong well known home audio brands such as, Denon, Marantz, McIntosh Laboratory, D&M Professional, ReplayTV and recently acquired Boston Acoustics. Getting out of portable audio market will allow them to focus on what they are already doing very well.
However you will not see the Rio brand name just disappear. Throwing away a good brand name is like throwing away money. Most likely the Rio name will be sold off or licensed to another manufacturer, which will be transparent to the consumer. So expect to see it again in the future.
3 Comments
robert baker on October 9, 2005 9:35 AM
i am trying to find a song that was packaged with one of the original rio mp3 players it was called dance again and was on one of the cd rom,s that was with the set up disk and was along with other songs that rio gave as mp3,s allowed to use on your players. I have looked for this song now for years the mp3 players where new when you had the cd disks bundled with the player it cost around$500.00 at the time several years ago. I would greatly appreciate any help i could get trying to find this song thank you for any help you can provide asit has a lot of sentimental value being the song i sent my wife girl friend at the time and is of great value to us both..:) Thanks again Rob Baker
Adrian on December 27, 2005 3:53 PM
A smart move. Finally threw my Karma away and switched to a Creative Zen Sleek.
Betsy Markum on May 16, 2006 8:16 PM
I can’t believe it, my co-worker just bought a car for $42457. Isn’t that crazy!