In light of the recent revelation that Apple's various iPods and minis hold a disgustingly high 92.1 percent of U.S. market share among sales of hard drive-based portable music players, faithful viewer Jonathan Zhan notes that apparently Apple's rivals have declared this to be Ugly iPod Competitor Week. We've already mentioned the newly-announced Virgin Player in passing, which, at the iPod mini's $249 price point, adds an extra 1 GB of storage space, an FM radio tuner, a little less weight, and, apparently, two headphone jacks; while Virgin's banking on its better feature list and the name recognition of the Virgin brand, the thing looks like a cheap plastic remote control that shipped with a sub-$50 silver-plastic commodity DVD player, and frankly, we can't see it as much of a threat to miniPod mania. But the "iPod mini killers" are popping up out of the ground like mushrooms, now, and at least two other pretenders to the throne are debuting this week.

First up: the Creative Zen Micro, which, as pictured at The Register, comes in some truly alarming colors and which Creative claims will "outshine all the others." Like the Virgin Player, the Zen Micro has an FM radio tuner and a 5 GB hard drive, but also boasts built-in voice recording and a 12-hour removable battery (so you can carry a spare). It's also 6 millimeters shorter than the mini (but .2 ounces heavier) and syncs contacts, calendar events, and a to-do list. Are its extra features worth its $280 price tag? That depends, but it's nice to know that the folks who have always wanted a bright orange MP3 player that glows blue can finally die happy.

The other "mini-killer" might not technically be announced this week, but faithful viewer mrmgraphics notes that, according to CNET, it's already made a public appearance as a Bill Gates prop during Microsoft's digital media event yesterday: yes, apparently Dell isn't satisfied having one flop on its hands, so in addition to the woefully sucktastic iPod clone known (to the three people who bought one) as the Dell Digital Jukebox, it seems that Dell is planning to roll out a "Pocket DJ" to go up against the miniPod. Since it's as yet unannounced, details from Dell are nonexistent, but Engadget has a teensy low-res photo and claims that the player will be a 5 GB model and will undercut the miniPod's price (surprise, surprise) by $50. We can't wait.

So clearly there'll be a pretty hefty selection of mini-class players available when the holiday-driven consumer frenzy kicks into high gear, and we'll just have to wait and see how much-- if any-- these 5 GB devices eat into Apple's 92.1 percent market share. Personally, we're not worried, but we wouldn't mind seeing Apple at least kick the mini's drive up to 5 GB, just to eliminate the most obvious feature discrepancy. Then again, Apple will most likely sell all the units it can make this quarter even at 4 GB, so why bother? Remember how crazy iPod sales were last Christmastime? That was, what, 733,000 units? Last quarter Apple sold over two million, and we doubt many people were buying them as Independence Day presents. Heck, reducing miniPod demand slightly this quarter might be just the thing to keep Apple from physically catching fire before New Year's...