Wow, isn't it amazing how quickly a company can move when it finally realizes it's getting the living snot kicked out of it? Barely five months ago, Sony debuted its tardy response to the iPod, the NW-HD1 Network Walkman; reviews of the device's design were largely positive, but for some reason Sony had decided to ship the thing with support for exactly one digital music format: the company's own proprietary ATRAC3. That was a deal-breaker for most people, since the NW-HD1 couldn't play standard MP3s, by far the most prevalent format out there, nor could it play music downloaded from the iTunes Music Store or any of the zillion lesser Windows Media-based services; for downloads, it was tethered to Sony's own Connect service, which Sony itself euphemistically describes as "not an entrenched recognizable service." (Sure, the iPod ties you to the iTMS, but at least the iTMS is good.) Consequently, consumers stayed away in droves and the NW-HD1 proved roughly as popular as Baskin-Robbins's experimental ice cream flavor "Chock Full o' Haggis 'n' Navy Beans."

A few months later, Sony had a chance to reflect on a quarter's worth of sales charitably described as "wildly disappointing" (and more accurately described as "a blunt instrument to the face")-- and not just NW-HD1 sales, either, but those of the company's flash-based players, too, which were also ATRAC-only devices. The outcome? Two months ago Sony finally announced that it was finally going to break down and add MP3 support to its flash-based products... but, inexplicably, not to the NW-HD1; it was, however, "considering expanding MP3 support to hard disk devices" at some point in the future.

Well, evidently the future is now: it's barely two months later, but faithful viewer frozen tundra tipped us off to a Reuters article reporting that Sony has just introduced the NW-HD3. What happened to the NW-HD2, you ask? Apparently we blinked and missed it, although it seems we didn't miss much: according to I4U, the NW-HD2 came out in September and was just the NW-HD1 reissued in miniPod Silver, miniPod Blue, and miniPod Pink. Apparently before doing something as drastic as supporting MP3, Sony just wanted to make sure that the NW-HD1's crappy sales weren't due to its color. They weren't.

Anyway, as far as we can tell, the NW-HD3 is the same ol' NW-HD1 and -HD2 (complete with the same criminally misleading storage and battery claims), only with five available colors and MP3 support tacked on. So in less than two months, Sony's gone from "considering" adding MP3 support to its hard disk players to actually shipping a new product with MP3 playback built-in. Smacks of desperation, doesn't it? Still, since the NW-HD1's lack of MP3 support was really the single biggest factor that drove consumers screaming from the stores, maybe there'll be some real competition now. The NW-HD3 will be available in the UK "before Christmas" (although obviously not much before) for £249-- the same price as an iPod U2 Special Edition, but £30 more expensive than a plain vanilla 20 GB iPod. So, any bets on which product will finish out in front? (Again?)