[computator]

The business model of the S1 is just wild. It mimics the PC clone industry of the 1990s.

From the Wikipedia page:

This product is what is referred to as a 'common mold' which means many different suppliers can produce this same model. The manufacturers are almost exclusively located in China.

Primarily defined by the use of a system-on-a-chip of one of the Actions brands and some common core features, S1 products vary widely in software and hardware as well as design.

I counted 62 different manufacturers listed in the Wikipedia article that apparently licensed this reference design (the core features and basic hardware), and who then made variations to the user interface or added a feature or two, and slapped their names onto it.

There seems to have been a whole industry of MP3 Players that were essentially identical at the core electronics level in the early 2000s, and we never realized it.

[bobsmooth]

DankPods on youtube has a long running series documenting these low cost mp3 players, or as he calls them, nuggets.

[longtimelistnr]

i remember it very well, i bought a Sony at F.Y.E. at the mall. as a child, my mother insisted on Sony as it was reputable brand (thank god because they truly were better devices). But the non-Zune/Sony/iPod selections were all duplicates of the same garbage, this was ~2007.