New iPod products could emerge 'as early as June'

[AppleInsider]

Apple Computer could launch a new iPod product "as early as June" to help stimulate demand and market share, Banc of America Securities said today.

The research and investment firm predicts iPod unit shipment will decrease to 4.8 million units in the fiscal third quarter ending June, down slightly from 5.3 million units in the second quarter.

In a research report released to clients today and obtained by AppleInsider, analyst Keith Bachmanin noted that Synaptics, which provides components for Apple’s hard disk drive (HDD)-based iPods, reported record third quarter results which it attributed in part to strength in the portable music player market.

However, Synaptics is guiding flat results for next quarter, saying they are seeing softness in their customers’ forecasts for the portable music player market.

But the analyst said his firm's model already incorporates some seasonal softness for the iPod. "With flat [revenue] guidance from Apple’s last conf call, we imagine that investors are looking to flat to slightly down MP3 sales, and strength in CPUs," he said.

Still, Bachmanin said Apple could possibly post higher iPod sales than its supply and manufacturer partners would lead analysts to believe. "We still think the Street is unclear on production levels and inventory pull compared to sell through," he said. The analyst believes Apple is likely sitting on some inventory of raw material, and both work-in-progress and finished goods that wouldn't be reflected in its books.

"We see no reason to change our Apple EPS estimate for this year of $1.29, and we maintain our Buy rating," Bachmanin said.

In the same research report, Banc of America Securities also said that flash memory-based players are growing faster than HDD-based players. Synaptics, which only deals in HDD players, saw its stock tumble $3.00 or approximately 14% in afternoon trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[Squirrel_Monkey]

The part of Slashdot will be played by AppleInsider today.

This is non-news. The only "news" I can deduce from this is that Apple might introduce an iPod Shuffle with larger memory capacity.

[Kasper]

Originally posted by Squirrel_Monkey


The part of Slashdot will be played by AppleInsider today.

This is non-news. The only "news" I can deduce from this is that Apple might introduce an iPod Shuffle with larger memory capacity.

Well that's your opinion, and you are entitled to it.

In our defense, if we didn't think the analysis was newsworthy, we wouldn't publish it.

One interesting bit I left out that you may find "newsworthy:" Creative, the iPod's largest competitor, sold over 2 million players last quarter. That's a pretty substantial number. Creative is expecting a slight increase in sales for its next quarter, while Apple is guiding for flat sales.

I think one of the points analysts are driving lately is that Apple's guidance may be deceiving. Some analysts don't believe Apple's forward looking predictions, or see them as being inclusive.

While sales of iPods are expected to slow this quarter, this analyst is pointing out that Apple may still beat expectations due to grey areas in production and inventory the Street can't necessarily analyze, but likely contain additional units.

Additionally, the analyst is predicting that sales will decline this quarter, and likewise the next if Apple doesn't introduce new models in the interim. This is likely exactly what the company will do to keep revenues where they are -- it's sound reasoning to suggest new iPod models in a couple of months.

Best,

K

[Chris Cuilla]

These numbers are very interesting. From what you are saying:

Apple 5.3M (all models)
Creative 2.0M (all models, I assume)
Others 1.0M (guessing a number here and assuming all models)

Puts Apple's overall market share at about 64% (and 24% for Creative). Very good...but it would seem that shuffle hasn't increased their share.

New models may certainly help. If they can remain steady for some time around 70%, it seems they will be fine. It might be the right time for Apple to think about licensing FairPlay to Creative for some amount per device sold. The amount will necessarily be less than Apple's gross per device profit, but not hugely so I think. Maybe it is a sliding scale (based on retail $ of the device sold or something). I don't know how such deals work.

This would effectively give Apple 88% of the market and likely remove any remaining (psychological) barriers about "openness" or what not.

Rio could be a second licensee.

At that point, I think it is "game over" for everyone else.

[MacCrazy]

This may help but it could also reduce iPod sales and therefore reduce Apple's earnings. Remember the iTMS is to help sell iPods, not to make a substantial profit on its own.

[Tazznb]

Whooopie....! NOT!!! Better iPods than nothing.

If Apple is truly having chip problems to produce powermacs (if they still actually care) then maybe they should go with AMD.

[hmurchison]

Originally posted by Tazznb

If Apple is truly having chip problems to produce powermacs (if they still actually care) then maybe they should go with AMD.

Why? AMD would need at least factor of 3x the speed of the fastest G5 to even make it worth contemplating switching to AMD X86 chips. We're not even close to being that far behind. I'd say the AMD chips are less than %5 faster overall clock for clock.

Back OT. I look forward to new iPods. For one I'd love to see them support HE-AAC especially the shuffles but that might not happen.

[akhomerun]

Originally posted by Tazznb
Whooopie....! NOT!!! Better iPods than nothing.

If Apple is truly having chip problems to produce powermacs (if they still actually care) then maybe they should go with AMD.

plus then apple would have to rewrite the entire operating system and have everyone rewrite their programs and apple already did that to developers with OS 10

plus people with older macs couldnt upgrade their software without upgrading

and then you have to consider that AMD is having its own production problems with its new dual core chips. until it gets its new fabrication factory up, AMD will have trouble keeping up. in fact they priced them to discourage demand for the time being.

it's really funny how stupid your comments are

[MacCrazy]

Originally posted by akhomerun
it's really funny how stupid your comments are

your post was fine until this sentence. Try and resist the urge to insult people. This is not a slagging-off forum.

[Chris Cuilla]

Originally posted by akhomerun
then apple would have to rewrite the entire operating system and have everyone rewrite their programs

This isn't quite true. NEXTSTEP (and I suspect OS X by extension) was perhaps one of the most portable OSes around...head-to-toe. When Apple bought NeXT...NEXTSTEP was running on 68000, 88000, SPARC, Intel and PA-RISC.

Furthermore, NeXT pioneered a thing called "fat binaries" in which developers could easily (and I do mean easily) build a version of their application with any combination of the above binary targets. It was literally a check box in the IDE (Project Builder as it was called back then).

Now, there would still be many obvious logistics to overcome, including:

1. Optimization for the new hardware.

2. Is every application now "fat binary capable"?

Etc.

Bottom line...it is more possible than you realize. Of course that doesn't make it any more probable.

[Tazznb]

Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
This isn't quite true. NEXTSTEP (and I suspect OS X by extension) was perhaps one of the most portable OSes around...head-to-toe. When Apple bought NeXT...NEXTSTEP was running on 68000, 88000, SPARC, Intel and PA-RISC.

Furthermore, NeXT pioneered a thing called "fat binaries" in which developers could easily (and I do mean easily) build a version of their application with any combination of the above binary targets. It was literally a check box in the IDE (Project Builder as it was called back then).

Now, there would still be many obvious logistics to overcome, including:

1. Optimization for the new hardware.

2. Is every application now "fat binary capable"?

Etc.

Bottom line...it is more possible than you realize. Of course that doesn't make it any more probable.

Thanks for teaching "akhomerun" the facts about the possibility of porting OSX (its after the porting where all the trouble will come in).

Apple ALREADY HAS a fully functional x86 OS waiting (possibly for nothing).

I know that akhomerun hasn't a clue on 3D graphics, pro & consumer, but we are WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY (x4 in some cases) behind.

To akhomerun:
I believe there's no one who participate in this forum is stupid; just ignorant, and until you do pro 3D graphics you are ignorant, and should refrain from such comments.
Apple has been underwhelming in this area for quite some time (highest video Mb is 256Mb recent, and x86 is 640Mb.)

I love Apple as much as you or anybody else, but I'm not going to be such a fanboy that I'll refuse to acknowledge the truth. What are they going to do, drop all their pc hardware if the iPod does well enough?

Have a nice life.

[david_oc]

Originally posted by Tazznb
I believe there's no one who participate in this forum is stupid; just ignorant, and until you do pro 3D graphics you are ignorant

Calling all non 3d graphics professionals ignorant is hardly better than calling people stupid. I appreciate the point you are trying to make but you fell into the same mistake you were trying to correct.

Now to get back on topic ( )...

I'd like an iPod with colour screen, at least as slim as the 20GB, shipping with an iguana

[mdriftmeyer]

Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
This isn't quite true. NEXTSTEP (and I suspect OS X by extension) was perhaps one of the most portable OSes around...head-to-toe. When Apple bought NeXT...NEXTSTEP was running on 68000, 88000, SPARC, Intel and PA-RISC.

Furthermore, NeXT pioneered a thing called "fat binaries" in which developers could easily (and I do mean easily) build a version of their application with any combination of the above binary targets. It was literally a check box in the IDE (Project Builder as it was called back then).

Now, there would still be many obvious logistics to overcome, including:

1. Optimization for the new hardware.

2. Is every application now "fat binary capable"?

Etc.

Bottom line...it is more possible than you realize. Of course that doesn't make it any more probable.

Clarification: We at NeXT had Quad Fat Binaries that were 68k, x86, PA-RISC and SPARC (not all btw), but not the Motorola 88k.

We had the multiprocessor ``Brick'' (a thicker pizza box) that had dual prototype PowerPC chips (a competitor to the PowerPC 601), which had Fibre Ports along with many other goodies too far ahead of its time and when Steve cancelled the Hardware branch went into the Dev Hall running NeXTStep 3.3.

What still surprises me after leaving Apple during the early iMac days is that Steve moved Jon Rubenstein to the iPod Division when he has extensive experience in Servers and high-end workstations.

[Tazznb]

Originally posted by david_oc
Calling all non 3d graphics professionals ignorant is hardly better than calling people stupid. I appreciate the point you are trying to make but you fell into the same mistake you were trying to correct.

Now to get back on topic ( )...

I'd like an iPod with colour screen, at least as slim as the 20GB, shipping with an iguana

I'm sorry if I made it sound that way but the only person whom I was referring to for ignorance is akhomerun.

[Chris Cuilla]

Originally posted by mdriftmeyer
Clarification: We at NeXT had Quad Fat Binaries that were 68k, x86, PA-RISC and SPARC (not all btw), but not the Motorola 88k.

We had the multiprocessor ``Brick'' (a thicker pizza box) that had dual prototype PowerPC chips (a competitor to the PowerPC 601), which had Fibre Ports along with many other goodies too far ahead of its time and when Steve cancelled the Hardware branch went into the Dev Hall running NeXTStep 3.3.

What still surprises me after leaving Apple during the early iMac days is that Steve moved Jon Rubenstein to the iPod Division when he has extensive experience in Servers and high-end workstations.

My mistake. I had heard the "brick" was 88K-based (never released as you pointed out). Sorry. Thanks for the correction. The Rubenstein move is interesting indeed. Might mean nothing at all. But who knows.

[monkeyastronaut]

yay, new white iPods with dynamic engraving technology. Use iTunes to transfer songs and engrave your 'Pod.

[Squirrel_Monkey]

Originally posted by Kasper
Well that's your opinion, and you are entitled to it.

In our defense, if we didn't think the analysis was newsworthy, we wouldn't publish it.

One interesting bit I left out that you may find "newsworthy:"...

Okay, with the context you added, the item becomes much more interesting.

I just don't like grabby headlines that fail to deliver. Hello, I'm already grabbed by your great site.