My mind is just boggled by the retail presence of HP and what that means for the iPod. If it's in all 110,000 retail locations, and each of those sell 1 per week, we're talking 1 MILLION iPods a quarter. That's at a clip of 1 per WEEK. Surely some will sell way more than that. I'm in awe. I am worried about market saturation, though. How many people need iPods?
More like how many people are willingly going to be buying portable music jukeboxes that don't support WMA? How legitimate a contender is AAC now HP is reselling iPods? How soon do other music players get support for FairPlay?
More like how many people are willingly going to be buying portable music jukeboxes that don't support WMA?
IMHO -- the biggest reason WMA is succeeding/might succeed is the captive audience factor, people who'll take whatever jukebox software installed on their "entertainment center" PC, and use it to rip their own CD collection without ever changing the encoding to something other than WMA.
That's why this HP deal is so big -- the default/desktop iTunes deal means that Apple gets cut in on a huge percentage of the "I never change the defaults" population. That population is going to buy the whole package from HP probably, or at least they'll never notice the lack of WMA support as a deterrent to purchasing an iPod (as far as I know, there's very little file trading in the WMA format -- it's all MP3).
People, don't bite the hand that feeds you. She is a very smart CEO. She has turned the company around. They are still No. 2 (or No. 1) depending on a particular quarter. Apple should do as well.
There are some disparaging remarks about HP CEO Carly Fiorina earlier on this thread. She made the deal with Apple so if she's as stupid as some have suggested.... well, HP will sell more iPods (HP Digital Music Players) then Apple ever could. And HP is a MUCH bigger company then Apple. That's the hell what I'm talking about!
My mind is just boggled by the retail presence of HP and what that means for the iPod. If it's in all 110,000 retail locations, and each of those sell 1 per week, we're talking 1 MILLION iPods a quarter. That's at a clip of 1 per WEEK. Surely some will sell way more than that. I'm in awe. I am worried about market saturation, though. How many people need iPods?
Just to put this in perspective, in the last analyst conference call Fred Anderson expressed a hope that Apple would get the iPod into 8,000 retail outlets in time for the holidays.
Comments
2001
Apple's Five-gigabyte iPod is released.
2002
- January: Quarterly iPod sales shows thousands of units sold.
- March 20: Ten-gigabyte version released.
- July 17: Twenty-gigabyte model debuts, as well as first Windows-compatible iPod.
2003
- April 29: Smaller, thinner iPod released in 10-, 15- and 20-gigabyte versions; iTunes Music Store opens.
- June 1: One million units sold.
- July 16: Buy a Volkswagen Beetle, get an iPod stereo connection free.
- Sept. 8: Forty-gigabyte model released; iTunes software and music service released for Windows OS.
- Dec. 18: AOL subscribers get instant access to iTunes Music Store.
2004
- Jan. 6: Mini 4-gigabyte iPod released in various colors; music store reaches 500,000 song catalog; 2 million iPods sold.
- Jan. 8: Apple partners with Hewlett-Packard to produce an HP-branded iPod and bundle iTunes software on new HP machines.
Source: Apple, The Associated Press
Originally posted by torifile
My mind is just boggled by the retail presence of HP and what that means for the iPod. If it's in all 110,000 retail locations, and each of those sell 1 per week, we're talking 1 MILLION iPods a quarter. That's at a clip of 1 per WEEK. Surely some will sell way more than that. I'm in awe. I am worried about market saturation, though. How many people need iPods?
More like how many people are willingly going to be buying portable music jukeboxes that don't support WMA? How legitimate a contender is AAC now HP is reselling iPods? How soon do other music players get support for FairPlay?
Originally posted by Eugene
More like how many people are willingly going to be buying portable music jukeboxes that don't support WMA?
IMHO -- the biggest reason WMA is succeeding/might succeed is the captive audience factor, people who'll take whatever jukebox software installed on their "entertainment center" PC, and use it to rip their own CD collection without ever changing the encoding to something other than WMA.
That's why this HP deal is so big -- the default/desktop iTunes deal means that Apple gets cut in on a huge percentage of the "I never change the defaults" population. That population is going to buy the whole package from HP probably, or at least they'll never notice the lack of WMA support as a deterrent to purchasing an iPod (as far as I know, there's very little file trading in the WMA format -- it's all MP3).
Originally posted by MacsRGood4U
People, don't bite the hand that feeds you. She is a very smart CEO. She has turned the company around. They are still No. 2 (or No. 1) depending on a particular quarter. Apple should do as well.
What in the hell are you talking about?
What in the hell are you talking about?
There are some disparaging remarks about HP CEO Carly Fiorina earlier on this thread. She made the deal with Apple so if she's as stupid as some have suggested.... well, HP will sell more iPods (HP Digital Music Players) then Apple ever could. And HP is a MUCH bigger company then Apple. That's the hell what I'm talking about!
Instead of the iMac, you see this:
There's an HP Pavilion on Apple.com!
Originally posted by MacsRGood4U
One more thing. Almost lost in all of this is that Quicktime will also be bundled with iTunes.
Way to not read the thread. This has been discussed.
:P
PCs on Apple's site are nothing new. The fact that it's an HP says something, though.
Originally posted by torifile
My mind is just boggled by the retail presence of HP and what that means for the iPod. If it's in all 110,000 retail locations, and each of those sell 1 per week, we're talking 1 MILLION iPods a quarter. That's at a clip of 1 per WEEK. Surely some will sell way more than that. I'm in awe. I am worried about market saturation, though. How many people need iPods?
Just to put this in perspective, in the last analyst conference call Fred Anderson expressed a hope that Apple would get the iPod into 8,000 retail outlets in time for the holidays.
They're about to hit it out of the park.