Sandisk CEO Admits What We Already Knew

"SanDisk CEO Eli Harari once plotted to dethrone the iPod with a series of “iDon’t” ads a marketing campaign that cast Apple iPod users as fad-driven sheep, and promoted his company’s Sansa media players as the smart alternative. Some fads, however, don’t pass. And in his sunny Silicon Valley conference room one recent morning, the founder and CEO of SanDisk admits what many music lovers have known for a long time: the iPod wars are over, and Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) won. “You can’t out-iPod the iPod,” Harari now admits."

It's all well and good to be number two, but when you're number two and number one has 85% of a market, you're a failure.  For years, Sandisk tried to distinguish the Sansa by positioning it as an alternative to the iPod and pretty much nothing else.  It made it big with the "anything but the iPod" crowd to the tune of a slightly less than minute market share, but the rest of the world mostly ignored it.

Sandisk should stick to what they kick butt at: flash memory.  No one does that better.  Hell, some people even think SD Card means SanDisk Card.