iPod nano sales off to slow start

245678

Comments

  • Reply 21 of 149
    Something missing from all this analysis is that, for the first time in my own memory, Apple actually had impressive stock of a new product from day one. When, when has that ever happened before? Remember those long waiting lines for the mini when it was released?



    If sales seem slow because of inventory, it's even more anomalous that there's actually product to sell.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 22 of 149
    I think it's a combination of the few things touched on already: greater demand for the black one than expected, no other colours and smaller capacity than people expect.



    I get the feeling that despite being the iPod 'signature colour', as Jobs puts it, white iPods are a bit dated now. It was cool when you were the only one in your train carriage with white headphones, but now every other person has them. White is no longer cool.



    There are also the other factors that many people now have an ipod and aren't going to readily shell out for another one on a whim.



    I think the nano will become a huge seller given that it ticks most of the boxes when considering what people's ideal mp3 player should be, but I don't believe it is quite the impulse buy that the mini (and in particular the pink one) was. The mini came out just when the general public woke up to digital music. The success was as much a matter of timing as anything else.



    It's only the geeks that truly appreciate the significance of flash memory over microdrive technology. Given the experiences that many of the early professional photographers had with the early 1GB microdrives (complete data loss and failures etc) I always felt that using microdrives in the mini was a class action lawsuit waiting to happen. Fortunately I've not heard of widespread drive failures (yet). I'm glad that the nano has gone flash, though.



    When 4GB flash RAM chips become available I think we will quickly see 4, 6 and 8GB nanos and sales will really take off, but those chips are not quite at the mass market stage. Next nano revision, perhaps?



    In the meantime I do believe that Apple should do a line of candy pink nanos (and ibooks for that matter) as they would sell like hot cakes.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 23 of 149
    zozo Posts: 3,117member
    im not sure size (GB) is the issue.



    I saw a report saying that the average iPod owner has something like 350 songs on it... which is moooooore than enough for a 2GB Nano to handle.



    Ya know, it could also be that he market is freakin' saturated of iPods....



    Or, people are already thinking of X-Mas before they have to make any kind of new gift/present or whatever.



    If Nano doesnt pick up, I wouldnt be surprised if Apple would accelerate the release of the Video iPod for XMas season.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 24 of 149
    Hey, maybe that's why they think they're slow. Apple has supplied their stores with so much, that they're not selling out. And most analysts have come to EXPECT Apple selling out of a good product as the norm.



    As for the mini, me (being a guy) have never understood why people buy the mini. It's hardly smaller than the iPod, and for 50 dollars more, you get well over twice as much capacity. I can't believe people are making so much fuss over color, give me a break.



    I also like the white more than the black. And I'll take a nano over a mini in a second, it DOES have less capacity, but the flash drive benefits make it worthwhile. Especcially when you read how much flash memory costs, and how good of a deal Apple is offering it. ALSO, with my 40GB photo, I can't transfer files from mac to pc because its a hard drive. If I had a flash drive, that wouldn't be the case



    EDIT: But I'm not buying because I already have a photo. But I'm much closer to buying a second iPod than I ever have been before. Let's wait and see what happens when the commercial rolls out. This new commercial actually says more than previous ipod commercials. What does a dancing silhoette (sic) tell you about iPod?
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 25 of 149
    As predicted, one thing is missing: Colors.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 26 of 149
    yeah. I guess I see it both ways. But cant help but wonder the reaction if they had released them in 4 colors..



    White, Black, Purple and Navy or Dark Green or Red or or or or......
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 27 of 149
    I've been waiting since day one for a 4GB black nano. I knew this would be the most popular version by far, and could've gotten a white one on day one, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to wait a week or two for the coolest of the cool.



    As for the minis, they're all still available...see Amazon. I know some people are upset that they're discountinued, but this just means you can buy one now for less...what, were you wanting to buy one 1-2 years from now?



    I think another major factor is that it took forever for them to get on display. My local Apple store just had them on display yesterday. Prior to that, they were selling them out of the back room only...not even the boxes were on the shelves.



    Another way to look at this, is to say this could be the *fastest* selling iPod model ever because people were buying them the day they were announced with lots of inventory (just not enough of the right versions).



    It would probably also help if Amazon had them in stock instead of listing all the nanos as pre-order.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 28 of 149
    Please people. It's September. Let's see. the price of gas is crazy. Everyone is going back to school. And oh ya half of America is under water or affected by the sinking of New Orleans and area. This is the perfect time to buy an MP3 player. Not. Wait till the holiday sales start coming in. The back to school sucking up money alone is enough to not have a product launch.

    All these people talking about capacity and whatnot just have agendas of their own. Hey why not be the first to write an iPod failure piece.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 29 of 149
    Yeah, I agree that this isn't the best time for buying high end electronics - it is for buying good enough to give to the kid going to school (ie iPod mini) electronics.



    Why discontinue a great device like the mini?!?!?!? I know all you marketing subgeniuses think you need a svelt product line, but ah... no, you don't.



    Keep the iPod mini and other devices as is or move to color screens and keep the Nano as the must have thing for corporate and geek types. We DO have consumer and pro computer lines, why not keep the same for iPods? This would then give Apple different market segments for experimenting with video and other communications/pda functionalities.



    ProPod Nano, engraved with your corporate logo.

    iPod Mini with pink fuzzy teddybear accessories.



    The time for the iPod division to diversify as a real seperate department is NOW.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 30 of 149
    It's way to early make this sort of claim.

    I work at Circuit City on the east coast, and we don't even have the nanos in the store yet. We won't even see them in the store until monday (9/19).

    Sure, they've been at the apple store for a week now, but most people shop at retail stores.

    So, give it a while!

    It will be big. Especially for the holidays.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 31 of 149
    Just a few points to concur with what is said.



    We went to the Bluewater store (UK) on Sunday and they were sold out of black 4GB nanos, plenty of whites and black 2GBs though.



    My bro, who is a general purpose buyer of electronics, was in the iPod mini market, but when I showed him this he liked it. He also wanted the black one, however he went for the 4GB white nano instead.



    To stop scratches we went halves on some iPod socks, which as I mentioned on another thread *just* fit the nano. But hey, now we both have colours.





    * Just an aside, the reaction I got from my mates when I turned up at the pub with my iPod in my orange sock was bizarre; they thought it was cool. In fact no-one there disapproved of it, and a lot of amazed smiles at the Apple logo etc...
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 32 of 149
    sjksjk Posts: 603member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by satchmo

    Sadly, for a generation of kids, Apple is only about iPods.



    "Mommy, I wanna go to the iPod store!"
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 33 of 149
    really easy ways to make the ipod nano sell



    1. more colors!

    2. advertising!

    3. $50 price slash within 4 months.



    three really easy, possible things apple could do.



    at this point though, the biggest problem is that nobody knows about the ipod nano. it was announced at some obscure conference. sales will pick up when apple actually lets the public know through magazine and TV ads.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 34 of 149
    After reading that previous report in AppleInsider, I highly doubt a price slash would be feasible. They're already making less than they did on the mini. But I think the sheer volume of sales they're expecting will make up for that
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 35 of 149
    dfilerdfiler Posts: 3,420member
    Here's another vote for the analyst being clueless.



    He simply doesn't have enough sales data or any inkling of what apple's expectations actually were.



    I'm quick to point out when I think apple has misread the market. However, this has never seemed the case with iPods. If anything, apple has repeatedly demonstrated that they "get" this market while others don't.



    HD availability was the biggest production hold-up for previous iPods. However, the flash memory market is quite mature. I'm sure apple can get their hands on more flash based memory than they could possibly use. They aren't planning on changing models soon... so there is absolutely no reason not to ensure initial demand is met.



    They allegedly only sold 15% (complete guess) of their entire stock in one weekend? The sky is falling.



    I predict that nano sales will easily eclipse all previous iPod sales.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 36 of 149
    No FireWire?



    NO sale...



    PERIOD
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 37 of 149
    19841984 Posts: 955member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by macslut

    I know some people are upset that they're discountinued, but this just means you can buy one now for less...what, were you wanting to buy one 1-2 years from now?



    No, because they could have announced new minis with color screens and 8GB or 10GB hard drives.



    Steve Jobs even admited the minis were their best selling iPods and that replacing them with the nano was a huge risk. It's not exactly logical to kill off your best selling product. There really was no reason to do so.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 38 of 149
    dfilerdfiler Posts: 3,420member
    Windows/USB2 syncs iPods faster than OSX/firewire. (Sorry, don't recall the link)





    I say this despite being a Mac user and prefering firewire on a technical level.



    Far more people lack firewire than lack USB. In the real world, USB is perfect for this device even if a handful of firewire fundamentalists claim that it is a deal breaker.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 39 of 149
    boogabooga Posts: 1,082member
    I agree that lack of colors are a problem, but disagree that price is. Going back to Palm days, we know that people will buy a hot consumer electronics item as long as it's "cool" and costs less than $300. The hurricane and gas expenses probably contributed a lot to all sorts of retail problems this week.



    The comment about it "feeling like a remote" is interesting. I would think an effect like that would also affect the Shuffle, but that doesn't seem to be the case.



    The stupid dock adapter that doesn't adapt to anything probably makes people feel less warm and fuzzy about their purchase, but at that point they've already bought. No firewire barely matters to the vast majority of iPod buyers, who mostly use Windows.



    In the end, I think it really comes down to people not liking the look and feel of the white Nano, and Apple overproducing it.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 40 of 149
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Gakusei

    They should've released 4 and 6 gig models.



    The 6 gig will most likely be the Rev B
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
Sign In or Register to comment.