Apple is due to drop a new Inventec Appliances manufactured, flash-based widescreen “iPod video” with touch-interface (widely rumored to carry the iPod Touch brand) sporting WiFi and an iPhone-like UI when it ships “at the end of this month or early October.” Also in the cards is a Foxconn manufactured iPod nano with more storage and iPhone-like UI at the same prices as existing models and higher capacity iPod shuffles from Asustek.

The Apple prepare the next generation iPod. Specifically, will it or won’t it feature a device-wide touch-screen running OS X — a stripped down iPhone if you will. Enter DigiTimes, with their hit-or-miss record of Taiwanese sources, who are calling for a touch-screen iPod to launch in August. Sources at “upstream suppliers” claim that WinTek — a former iPod panel supplier back in the black-and-white iPod days — won the order for the capacitive touch screen panels. With Jobs himself calling the iPhone the “best iPod yet,” we certainly don’t doubt that Apple’s working on a touch-screen iPod (possibly with WiFi).

Creative announced the new Zen Wav MP3 player. The Creaive Zen Wav MP3 player has 2 GB of capacity and it supports MP3, WMA, WAV playback, as well as transcoded AVI video and JPEG images.

Zen Wav music player offers up to 30 hours of continuous playback with the embedded battery, as Creative promise. Zen Wav measures 85.0 x 42.0 x 12.5 mm and weights 49g.

SDI Technologies proudly presents the new i-Home iH8, yet another iPod dock with an alarm clock. The iH8 is the new updated version of the i-Home iH5, and is compatible with all iPods. The new version has a new design that?s very similar to the , and a LCD screen that’s large enough to tell what time it is, or which song is playing.

The i-Home iH8 is equipped with two 3W speakers, and comes with a remote control. You can use it with the AC adapter or with batteries. As expected, you can wake up to the sound of your favourite tunes, or with the FM/AM radio. The iH8 has a dimmer function so the light from the screen won?t bother you while you?re sleeping, and a sleep timer that can be set to reduce the volume of the songs gradually when you?re falling asleep.

Football (or Soccer) has managed to influence the designers of gadgets for some time; we have seen many different items that follow this sport inspiration. Yet the design of this MP3 player though football related, looks remarkably like the core of uranium that you see in films when the villains are preparing their nuclear strike.

This simple design is probably one of the most distinctive shaped MP3 players that are available on the market today; its lines and details make it a very desirable item indeed. Size wise it is only a mere four and half centimeters across which further makes this very attractive, to put it into perspective it is only about the size of a small orange, so it can be quite easily be put into a pocket or even used as the manufacturers suggest on a key chain, but it might be worth taking the ear phones when you open the front door to your house.

As for the features of the player, even though it is small in size it does still have a OLED screen of 80 x 48 resolution, a stopwatch, can receive up to thirty of the preset FM radio stations and comes with 256 mb, 512 mb and 1 gb of internal memory, so this MP3 has all the desired qualities along with a great design.

Prices will start at around $62.

Creative unveiled its new $39.99 ZEN Stone. ZEN Stone is a tiny 1GB MP3 player can hold up to 250 songs and can operate for 10 hours on a single charge (12 hours for the iPod Shuffle). A wide palette of colors is also available: black, blue, green, pink, red and white.

“The Creative ZEN Stone, at just $39.99, opens up a huge new market for MP3 players,” said Creative chairman and CEO Sim Wong Hoo. “This is an incredible price for everyone to get a superior quality MP3 player capable of holding up to 250 songs. Whether it’s your only player or a second player to take with you anywhere, the low price lets you think of MP3 players in a whole new way. You can loan it to a friend just like you would a CD or a mix tape and not have to worry about it, but you’ll like it so much that you’ll want another, so you always have one with you.”

The ZEN Stone will also come to market with the $39.99 Creative TravelSound ZEN Stone which turns the MP3 player into a portable speaker system. The TravelSound ZEN Stone will be available in black or white and can operate for 20 hours with two AAA batteries.

The ZEN Stone and the TravelSound ZEN Stone will be available at online retailers and in B&M stores on May 14.

iRiver released the B20 MP3 player in April. The iRiver B20 supports DMB and DAB digital TV/audio. The new MP3 player has a 2.4-inch LCD display, support for various media formats including MP3, WMA, OGG, MPEG-4, WMV9, and JPG and has a SD card slot for expansion.
The iRiver B20 is available in 2GB or 4GB.

British company Amosu unveiled line of 24 carat gold iPods. Covered in hardened mirror gold, users can stare triumphantly at their beautiful, golden visage while rocking out to the new.

So how much will a golden iPod set you back?

30GB = $600
80GB = $800

Named the Xpod, this device is extension of external Xmod Wireless - these two are using X-Fi chips to produce clear and higher-quality audio from a compressed source, and offering streaming the sound to different components in the house as well. We have seen this concept live and we have to admit that we were impressed with the difference in sound quality and the range of streaming.

Microsoft is quickly working behind the scenes on its Zune MP3 player. Microsoft has modest expectations from the player and is expecting for it to pass the one million shipped mark by June 2007.

The first Zune will soon get two new colors. The first color is Baby Pink. And only 100,000 will be produced. A second new color, Watermelon Red, will be released after Baby Pink.

The Zune 2.0 will be similar in design to the original Zune but will be slightly thinner and will come with a larger HDD. The second new Zune is the highly-anticipated “Flash Zune.” A flash-based Zune player is exactly what Microsoft needs to compete with Apple’s popular Nano and Shuffle, so it comes as no surprise that the Flash Zune is in the pipeline.

The Flash Zune measures 3″ x 1.25″ x 0.25″. The flash MP3 player will have integrated WiFi and will be available in capacities equal to 2G.

Also of note is that 2.4 million Zunes will be manufactured during calendar year 2007 and 75% of those will be of the new Flash Zune.