Cowon’s iAudio 6 will find the light of day under the lights at CES. Aimed to be direct competition for the incredibly popular iPod nano, this player opts for a 0.85-inch 4GB hard drive instead of the more expensive skip-free flash memory. Where it has a definite advantage of its Apple cousin is that the iAudio 6 has video playback capabilities right out of the box, albeit on a tiny (for video) 1.3-inch 260k-color OLED display.

Whereas the nano is known for being super slim, Cowon’s player may seem quite chunky by comparison. Instead of a click wheel, Cowon goes linear with what they call “Swing Touch”, a percentage-based, touch-sensitive line that runs diagonally across the player’s controls. At first glance, it seems like the player is oriented more for lefties, but if you turn the player counter-clockwise to watch videos, the diagonal orientation becomes much more right-handed friendly.

No official word yet on launch date or pricing.