From what I learned from lotoo they will not produce a new product if they don't have a proper innovation. Releasing products left and right without much innovation looks silly. The ak380 is essentially using centrance idea, they save a market for attached amp and they implemented themselves.
And they know there are a couple of thousand people who will throw their money at
any new flagship AK DAP, regardless of price, regardless of specs. It's like a never-ending cash-cow for them.
yea. I'm curious how Lotoo will react.
ak240 <> paw gold
Ak jr <> paw 5000
Ak380 <> ? (Hopefully with balanced hp and line out and even more battery and parametric bands)
Many will think I'm joking about this, but I'm not: I predict the AK380 won't sound
substantially better than the PAW 5000.
A&K are so busy price-gouging, that they're forgetting that the sub-$1000 audiophile DAP market is
rapidly improving. Gone are the days (not so long ago) when SQ differences were larger between mid-market and high-end DAPs.
Actually. I was idly thinking about something else yesterday...
If a company had, say, a few hundred DAPs manufactured, but sales were slowing and the company had a new, unannounced, model nearing completion and release (which would inevitably slow sales of the older model even further), what could they do to stimulate sales of the older model, a few hundred units of which they were struggling to shift, just
a couple of months before the new model was due out?
Well, it 'suddenly occurred' to me that one simple idea could be to simply repackage those few hundred DAPs in a shiny new casing, to appeal to bling-seekers. Stainless steel could be one material option.
Then, once those units had been shifted, the new model could be announced.
It would leave a few hundred customers feeling aggrieved, but hey - they're only faceless individuals with yet more money to throw at their audiophile obsessions when the newer model is released,
just around the corner...
Anyway, this was all just day-dreaming in my mind, yesterday. I'm sure no real-life company would be so cynical as to do something like that.