Is MID the future of portable media players?

I went over to the our friends site at Dap Review, which I rarely do nowadays unfortunately, and found an interesting discussion about the state of the PMP/MP3 market. The biggest players are not releasing new models often enough and manufacturers from China still have not resolved their firmware issues. The most interesting post, in my opinion, was from vlada who volunteered that the not-so-humble MID (mobile Internet device) that BenQ, Lenovo and Aigo has been working on will take PMPs to the next level. The prices of these MIDs right now are nothing to scoff at. These are as far from Chinese MP4 players as you can go. The first of these MID to become operational and ready for shipment, the Aigo one, has been thoroughly reviewed at UMPC Fever. We want you to direct you, dear readers, to that review post and see for yourselves. It’s a 4.8-inch-screen, a Intel Atom Z500 running the engine, Midnux GUI, touchscreen and slide-out QWERTY, the full complement of HSDPA, WiFi and GPS. It’s really a media-centric computer. The unoxing video after the break.

Note: we still think the future of the PMP market looks something like this.