Computer memory company Sandisk Corp. on Thursday introduced a family of tiny digital music players and said it plans to challenge Apple Computer Inc. for dominance in the “flash” memory player market that represents the low-end of Apple’s gadget business.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Sandisk introduced a 6-gigabyte player using flash memory, made with chips that are smaller and lighter than those based on hard-disk drive technology. Because flash memory has  no moving parts it is far more durable than disk drives.

Sandisk said its Sansa e270 is now the highest-capacity flash-based player in the market, and will be priced at about $300.
 
At a press conference at CES, Sandisk said it intends to take on Apple, whose hot-selling iPod Nano music player runs on flash memory.
 
“Ultimately, we would like to make this a two horse race, and reach 35-40 percent market share,” Nelson Chan, the president of Sandisk, said at a news conference.

He cited industry research data showing that Apple enjoyed a market share of around 49 percent, with Sandisk at about 29 percent in December.

Because Apple sells both flash-based and far higher capacity disk-drive players, it still dominates the overall global market for digital music players, with some estimates ranging upward of 75 percent of the music player market. In the past year, several former competitors have withdrawn from the market in the face of Apple’s success.