Looking to address the many speculations about its activity, Dell Inc announced through a blog posting that the development of a digital music player is not in the company’s near-term plans. Dell’s officials explained that their digital entertainment strategy "has never been about a music player," and that their efforts will be focused on other projects in the upcoming months.

"As we said a few months ago, our strategy focuses on content offerings and delivery platforms that mix Zing software, remote access and pre-configured media bundles across all of our devices, including licensing agreements with entertainment distributors," noted the blog post.

The reason why these rumors started and kept being fueled is because Dell’s strategy included certain actions that appeared to slowly shift the company’s focus: starting with 2007’s acquisition of Zing and the company’s constant presence at rock festivals. Zing’s software is used for streaming audio and video feeds wirelessly on handheld devices and the general belief was that Dell was searching for the best way to get back into the music player market, after calling it quits in 2006 because of its incapacity to challenge Apple’s sales. Also, the appearance at festivals was considered another hint, as it is considered a good way of getting close to the music lovers and makes the company’s presence known for the targeted public.

Considering the units shipped worldwide, Dell is the world’s second largest computer company. Still, Acer Inc, which currently holds the third position, is gaining ground with its popular notebook offer, significantly better than Dell’s.

Even though it is not clear whether the new music player device will come out next year or even at all, it would have been a great move for the company to have begun the project a few months ago and present it before this year’s holiday season, in order to boost the revenue for the fourth quarter and secure its second place in the market.

The company’s entry in the MP3 player segment happened in 2003 but it never really managed to take off as its officials hoped and were forced to cut their losses short three years later. At this point, Apple is still the undisputed market leader, with more than 70 percent of the entire United States MP3 player segment. The iPod’s appeal does not seem to decrease as time goes by, probably because there is no real competition at this point and for the past few years there have been no new innovative releases. What Apple’s competitors should focus on is the development of a new device, with new features and new design details, stepping away from the drive to copy the iPod’s features and release a product that they can call their own and attract the users interested in trying something new and experimenting with a market that is supposed to provide more than one option.

Dell will surely prepare something for the holiday season, but unfortunately it will not be anything relateded to a new MP3 player line.