Over the years, the iRiver company has come up with a fairly “rich” selection of multimedia players, most of them providing very advanced features, quite often a lot better than anything the competition (including here Apple) had to offer. However, it seems that the strong economic crisis the world is going through right now has affected even this South-Korean company, the proof being its latest announcement.

Thus, iRiver has announced the imminent launch of two new digital audio players: the T5 and the T6. The T5 comes with a regular thumbdrive form factor and a small LCD on top. There's a small navigation stick on the right side of the LCD screen, used to control the player's functions. The player uses an internal rechargeable battery, which should provide enough music for 13 hours. It will be available in 2GB or 4GB capacities.

Next we have the T6 which, as the name suggests, is somewhat “bigger”, and not capacity wise, since that would be a lie. Sure, it only comes in a 4GB option, but at least you can still choose between black and white (as with the T5). This one comes with a larger LCD, a built-in FM module and a more generous battery life: 28 hours. As with the T5, we have MP3, WMA and OGG support.

Now, if some of you have kept track of iRiver's previous models, you might ask yourself “aren't these a bit featureless compared to older models?”. The truth is that the economic crisis is affects every industry sector and every market across the world and nobody can hide from it. At least not for long, that is. This is why the T5 and T6 only cost $64 and $77 respectively, which means that iRiver is doing everything in its power in order to make sure its future products sell.


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