Funnily enough, Sony have chosen to support the MP3 format (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/23/sony_supports_mp3/) in their up and coming portable music hardware, instead of their own ATRAC (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding) codec. Now there is a surprise. There are plans not just to introduce MP3 as the codec for new devices, but to also make older devices MP3 compatible as well.