Nah, Sony was hell-bent on ATRAC and their proprietary memory stick standards. Not sure about the other major electronics manufacturers in JP, but the only one

Nah, Sony was hell-bent on ATRAC and their proprietary memory stick standards. Not sure about the other major electronics manufacturers in JP, but the only one that sounds "technological trend setter" in my mind is Sony, so if they weren't doing it nobody else was. And Job's Apple was throwing their hearts into open standards big time, abnormally so compared to the industry landscape. Nope, the iPod could have only been Apple