Last week, Tech.co.uk caught up with Creative 's UK marketing manager, John Moseley. After Creative's launch of the Zen Stone , Moseley was keen to discuss what Creative has in store in the next few months. He promised a range of new MP3 players, from low end to high end, as well as new X-Fi products.

Below is the full interview:

Tech.co.uk: Why are MP3 players sold with fairly mediocre earbuds?

John Moseley: It's fair to say that bundled earphones are probably the part of the product that has the least development put into it. At the end of the day people have the easy option to upgrade their earphones to their own choice. It's remarkable how many people haven't upgraded - that's an example of how people are not even aware that they are not listening to something that could sound better through better earbuds.

The bottom line is that it's a very competitive market. We need to reduce our costs to be able to compete. But we need to include earphones - if we didn't include them at all that would be bad. But it is possible for a customer to spend anything from £20 upwards and get a significant improvement on the bundled buds.

We have an earphone range starting from £15. We have a really nice set called the EP-630 which sound great.

Tech: Why not include the EP-630 with the Vision:m?

JM: The discerning buyer who does their homework may realise that if an MP3 player comes with far superior earphones, then they would recognise that as a good option and buy it.

But the MP3 player market is totally mass market now. A lot of people are buying without doing much research. And the moment you add a better set of earphones, you potentially add £10 to the product retail price. Suddenly you're more expensive than an iPod and that's difficult to justify for the normal buyer.

Tech: Could you not subsidise some better earbuds in order to flog more Vision:m's? Wouldn't that discern your product from the mass market 30GB iPod?