It never suprises me what lengths some are willing to go to just so that they can make more money. I’m talking about Creative of course, which made such a big hoo-hah about their new Creative Zen Touch in today’s Straits Times. Oh, Apple was slated to, and has announced, their 4th generation iPod today too. Coincidence? You decide.

Now, I’ve always felt that competition is good for the industry, whatever industry. The thing that irks me though is the fact that Creative claims you can put 10,000 songs in 20GB while Apple only claims to be able to fit 5,000 songs in the same amount of space. This looks absolutely amazing..until you realise that Creative is basing on the assumed bit rate of 64kbps WMA files for audio files in the Zen Touch vs 128kbps AAC for the iPod! I’m surprised that Creative would even bother making a claim like this when independent third-party tests indicate that WMA at 64kbps is hardly the equivalent of a well-encoded 128kbps MP3 file.

So, will customers fall for Creative’s claims? Will they go for Creative’s bulkier (though admittedly cheaper) Zen Touch against the market-leading Apple iPod? I guess time will tell.