Dell, Inc. NASDAQ: DELL) indicated this week that it has no plans to re-enter the digital music player market. For some reason, the blogosphere has been abuzz in recent weeks with possible rumors about Dell -- again -- trying to compete in the digital MP3 player market. With its astounding success the last time around, it makes perfect sense, right? Of course not.

Although Dell has reinvigorated its laptop PC designs in the last 18 months, has entered retail and has gained a little of the market share back it lost of Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE: HPQ), the fact remains that it makes boring, commodity computer equipment. Nothing more. Almost every single time the company wants to break into another market, the competition beats them down and spits them out. So, it's good to hear that Dell won't be getting back into the digital audio player market.

The weird twist here is that Dell purchased Zing Software recently, which made wireless access technology for over-the-air audio and video downloads to digital audio players. It's interesting to see that Dell bought Zing but less in 18 months later said it would not re-enter the hardware music player business. Of course, a lot has changed for the company in that time (and in the PC industry), and launching new products and categories in this economic environment is precarious at best. Perhaps Dell has shelved digital audio players until sometime in 2010 or later.

A recent article about one of Apple, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) former engineering executives left me laughing quite a bit. Tim Bucher, who recently left Apple for Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) after being accused by Apple CEO of being "manic depressive," is trying to throw a spear at his former company by trying to find a challenger to Apple's iTunes service with a quite-ambitious plan at Dell.

Instead of trying to create yet another online music and video ecosystem that syncs seamlessly with another round of boring Dell music devices, he's trying to create an industry-wide team of competitors to seriously challenge Apple's dominance in the iPod/iTunes marketplace. Notice I did not say "MP3/Music service" marketplace. Right now, it's all Apple in the digital music scene and has been for some time.

Consultant Rob Enderle says that Apple "locks you in" while Dell "locks you into choice." While opening up choice is great for consumers, history says that products and services become so fragmented and hard to use that they never reach critical mass. What Apple did with the iPod was to make the service that goes with it -- iTunes -- so easy to use that it quickly became the market leader. One brand, one service, simple to use.

It's true that many customers want freedom and choice in their music players and music download services so they can "mix and match" to their heart's content. Everyone else (yes, the majority) wants a solution as simple as a light switch. Flip it, and everything "just works." Good luck, Bucher and Dell, but to even come close to challenging Apple, your solution better be out of this world.