All this debating 1000/2000xl, my opinion on Akai's future..

I hear what you are saying (MPC_Producer), but being that they are a small company they are losing the battle not because of their product line, but more because of marketing! Lets take Roland for example; they can sell almost any piece of garbage their R&D team comes up with because they push their products HARD! It took almost a year and a half for the GC in my area to get a DPS24, and about the same amount of time to get an MPC4000.

Again I here what you are saying, and mostly agree, but pushing out new hardware when you have existing hardware that is still not fully implimented is not a good idea. It may help in the short term, but in the long run (espcially if it has a buggy OS) sales will slump. Just look at the DPS24, and MPC4000. Both are great products, but upon initial release they got bad reviews from the users due to buggy/incomplete OS's, and Akai had to slash prices to get them to sale!

Akai needs to make sure that when they release a product that it at least does what they promote it to due. They are very good with the updates, but once you put a bad foot forward it's hard to take that step back in the eyes of the public.

I think with the release of this new product they need to start becoming more competative in the marketing department. Also to release 3 MPC's in 3 years just floods the market, and could cause consumer confussion.

The first thing I would do is to make sure that the MPC1000 comes off without a hitch, and that they get some MAJOR hype going for it. Then they should attack the low-end digital recorder market as they did pretty well their, and their past success there can be a spring board. While doing this they need to get those OS updates out on the DPS24, and MPC4000, and start a little marketing for them also.

Hey that's just my 2 cents though, but only time will tell what Akai does.

AKAI has resumed advertising. The MPC1000 advertising is in most of the popular music magazines. They might not have much of an advertising budget revenue for anything else.

Interest in the DPS24 is dead. The other vendors are moving ahead of AKAI. Roland has the best top-of-the-line DAW now. I would not be surprised to see AKAI drop the DPS24 next year. Notice how the DPS24 is one of the products not being re-introduced in blue like the other products.

AKAI isn't releasing 3 MPCs in a year. The MPC4000 was introduced in 2002. The MPC1000 will be introduced in 2003 (we hope!). And the MPC2500 will be released in 2004. One new product a year is not a big deal, especially since the intended market for each model is different from the others.

There is enough interest in the MPC1000 to make it a very successful product. The combination of portability, lower cost, USB, CompactFlash, and other features enable it to succeed. AKAI has got to deliver this MPC soon to save the little credibility they have left. Releasing it in late January, when everyone is broke after Christmas, would surely be a major mistake.

You hit it on the head MPCpro. I agree with all your points, especially the one about the 1000. The MPC1000, at around $800 new is going to sell like no other Akaipro product yet. And then once they get all these MPC heads hooked, as soon as they need bigger and better with more expandability, where are they gonna turn? To the 2500, and 4000. Akai is very smart in releasing this 1000. Hope it turns out to be a good one.

"Notice how the DPS24 is one of the products not being re-introduced in blue like the other products. "

This is not true. The DPS24 does have the new blue style:
http://www.akaipro.com/jp/products/akai ... index.html

They should go with the chrome/black paintjob of the mpc2000xl se. To bad it wasn't out when I bought mine.