IRiver to quit Europe?

Crap. There is a rumor on the gadget web that iRiver is to quit the European market. I like iRiver, I own two of their players and would be quite happy to buy another one when I am upgrading. Now it looks like I may not get the chance.

Korean jukebox manufacturer iRiver appears to be on the verge of pulling out of the European market following the sacking of its Euro PR team.

Its marketing headquarters for Europe will now shift from Germany to an in-house department in Korea, suggesting that the company will cease to launch new products in our fine continent.

The company has a healthy cult following in Europe and the UK thanks to feature-laden jukeboxes such as the H10, but the faith of its passionate supporters has clearly not been enough to sustain a continent-wide investment.

I'm one of the cult followers and I really will be disappointed to see them leave the market. Hopefully they are only rationalizing their teams and will keep selling the players in Europe. The iRivers always seem to be ahead of the IPod with things like photos and even video, but they pack alot of other features into the case like FM Radio, Optical Line-In/Out, microphone, easy to upgrade firmware. All they were missing was the white headphones of fashion accessory status. Soon I'll end up having to buy an Apple IPod just because there wont be anything else available instead of buying based on features.

[via Gizmodo]