But will anybody care? Seriously. Haven’t people who want a portable digital music player settled on an iPod or one of its competitors from SanDisk or Microsoft?

With Apple owning more than 70 percent of the MP3 player market in North America, is the remaining 20-something percent incentive enough for Dell to want to re-enter the fray after failing with its first line of digital music players?

May the Dell DJs (2003-2006) rest in peace.

Apparently Dell thinks so. The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reported today that computer maker Dell will re-enter the market with a new player as early as September. Dell thinks it has a chance this time because, aside from a sub-$100 price point and Wi-Fi access to content, it has a new and improved strategy!

Rather than playing music you own, the Dell 2.0 device is geared around subscription services (like that hasn’t been tried before by Rhapsody, Napster, and others).

This time Dells says its integration is tighter and seamless — it is working on software for a range of portable PCs that will let users download and organize music and movies from various online sources, according to the WSJ. Dell already has ties to music services from Pandora and Rhapsody, and it’s not inconceivable that the major recording labels or the upcoming MySpace Music service wouldn’t want to get involved with Dell to produce their own device.

But the whole new Dell MP3 player smacks of the same repackaging “innovation” found in the food industry: New and improved toothpaste tubes! Easier-to-pour milk jugs! Color-sealed sandwich bags!

A new Dell MP3 player that costs less, tastes great!

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• Weekly wrapup, 28 July – 1 August 2008
• Rumor: Is Google, Dell working on mobile phone? Why not?
• Joost up for sale? Old media to the rescue
• Adobe launches “Moviestar” version of Flash Player – HD quality for Web video
• Zatz Not Funny: Amazon HD on TiVo, GiiNii Android device, Vudu update, Samsung BD-P1600 – Blu-ray Netflix and Pandora player

Initially targeted at the education market or those wanting a third machine, Netbooks are resonating with a much broader market — and not just because of their lower price point compared to more traditional and higher specced sub-notebooks. Despite years of industry propaganda, consumers are wising up to the fact that they don’t have to step on to the processor upgrade treadmill. Instead, in an age where more and more of our applications and data resides in the cloud (on remote servers, rather than stored locally), a machine with Internet connectivity and one that is powerful enough to run a modern web browser – that’s a Netbook by the way – is often all that we need.

This has put the industry on the back foot, reports The New York Times, since the sale of Netbooks produce significantly smaller margins and could unintentionally cannibalize existing and much more profitable product lines. Although the Netbook was pioneered by smaller players such as Asus and Everex who have a lot less to lose, many of the industry’s major PC manufacturers, but not all, have since released or announced their own Netbook efforts, notes the report. Acer, Hewlett-Packard and Dell are in, while Sony and Fujitsu are sitting it out for now.

“We’re sitting on the sidelines not because we’re lazy. We’re sitting on the sidelines because even if this category takes off, and we get our piece of the pie, it doesn’t add up,” Fujitsu’s Paul Moore tells the Times. “It’s a product that essentially has no margin.”

See also: I’ve jumped on the Netbook bandwagon (MSI Wind U100 / Advent 4211 review)

The problem for Fujitsu and Sony, along with companies who have jumped on board, is that the Netbook pie could get pretty big. Market research firm IDC has predicted that the category “could grow from fewer than 500,000 in 2007 to nine million in 2012 as the market for second computers expands in developed economies”, while Intel is being much more bullish. The company estimates that 40 million units will ship a year by 2011, which makes it all the more curious that last week Intel was heard talking down the version of its Atom chip designed specifically to power Netbooks.

During a conference call with analysts and the press, Intel CEO Paul Otellini was quoted as saying: “(Atom) is less than a third the performance of our Centrino (processor). You’re dealing with something that most of us wouldn’t use.” This is from the company who, along with the Taiwan-based Via, has done the most to define the Netbook category.

A product it now seems that Intel, along with many in the PC industry, would rather you didn’t buy.

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Related Articles at last100:

• How do you use your Netbook?
• Apricot Computers relaunches as Netbook maker
• Analyst: Apple to release ‘closed’ Netbook with iPhone-esque App Store
• Mike Arrington’s CrunchPad web tablet reaches prototype but should it go into production?
• TechCrunch interested in developing own web tablet — with your help