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100 Million iPods
Posted by
samzenpus
on Mon Apr 09, 2007 05:27 PM
from the that's-a-lot-of-music dept.
from the that's-a-lot-of-music dept.
prelelat writes "I find it somewhat hard to believe but this story over at PC world, indicates that the iPod has sold over 100 million units. It also asks how many are broken and replaced which makes me believe the number may be more accurate."
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Obligatory. (Score:5, Funny)
- CmdrBallmer
Lame. (Score:4, Funny)
"Sold" probably includes them all (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if there's a 10% warantee number, that still makes for 90M-or-so real sales. That is not too suprising considering how iconic the ipod is and how much Apple have invested in creating that image.
I wonder what Apple's advertising budget is for ipod? It probably gets to be somewhere around a buck per unit.
Re:"Sold" probably includes them all (Score:5, Insightful)
Many companies run their service centres as a seperate business unit because that's simpler. I don't know if Apple do this, but they might. If they do, then replacement units get sold to the service centres who then charge a service fee back to the ipod business unit. This is a far neater way to handle stock levels etc.
Regardless, I do agree that they have no need to pump up sales numbers. They're doing fine with no embellishment.
Parent
Sooo (Score:4, Insightful)
B) Hard to believe? The company is making a statement of fact flat out, and just not including the caveats such as replacement or upgrade purchases.
Slow. News. Day.
Oh, and the actual article (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
A bit of perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A bit of perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been gifted a Shuffle, and I've gifted iPod nanos to two people. And I'd bought a regular iPod which I later sold.
So, technically, I purchased 4 iPods according to Apple. There you go, skewing of stats, right there.
Huh? No, according to Apple, based on what you've said, you've purchased 3 (someone else purchased one and gifted it to you, but there's no way they'd know that it ended up in your hands, so by their count, you've only purchased three, because in fact, you've only purchased three). And how does the fact that you purchased three iPods skew the stats about the number of iPods sold? You purchased three, they count that has having sold three. 3 != 3?
Parent
The value of good user interface design... (Score:4, Interesting)
I Don't Love You (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:The value of good user interface design... (Score:5, Insightful)
People love to naysay the dominant market player, which is ironically the one getting trounced in the OS realm. I really do hope their new agreement for higher quality music takes off. I'm going to soon buy a permanent dock to dock my iPod with my high-end home audio system. So the new format will be greatly appreciated and I don't mind paying a few extra $$ for a high-def quality rip of Dark Side of the Moon.
Parent
Re:The value of good user interface design... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why dont you pay $10 for the CD and make a lossless rip of it using, say, Apple Lossless for use on your stereo? And then have a 192kbps VBR AAC rip for your iPod when its on the go and you care about quantity rather than too much quality? All without DRM.
Parent
Re:The value of good user interface design... (Score:4, Informative)
That's not quite true. http://www.1418hell.com/ [1418hell.com] (Now offline due to bandwidth restrictions). Here's the apple docs on it (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=3
I've also had major problems with Apple Firmware updates on my 60 gb 5G ipod. After updating firmware, I regularly find that Apple has dropped support for a specific video resolution or bit rate (the iPod is ridiculously temperamental with video support), which means half of the videos on my iPod don't work.
Now I don't ever upgrade my firmware; I'm really not missing out on much I guess.
Parent
Microsoft can be dethroned (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the reason that Microsoft can be dethroned--when you have good design, you can beat the giants. When you have shitty design and you are a giant, your product doesn't sell (Zune, case in point).
This is why Apple is sending shivers through the phone industry with the iPhone.
I predict that 2008 will be the year of actually easy to use phones, because of the well-designed competition by the iPhone.
Thank you Apple for raising the bar.
Parent
Why so hard to believe? (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple has done extraordinarily well here with the iPod and is poised to shape the future of digital downloads (software and media) with their iTunes Store.
Probably at least 5M units broken... (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, the real question is whether or not the proportion of lost/broken/damaged/stolen/etc iPods is similar to other devices. After all, do iPods really have a higher failure rate, or is it because there's more of them, you hear more about them?
(And before you start blaming the non-replacable battery - there are few devices other than cellphones, cameras and laptops where having a replacable battery actually is useful - it's likely by the time you need a replacement, the battery isn't even made anymore... Can you get replacement Li-Ion batteries for the many HPaq PDAs out there other than the current model/phone models? Or the multitude of 'superior' mp3 players of at least a couple years vintage?)
Their questions are totally irrelevant... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
1 song = 4E6 bytes
Total songs = 2E18 bytes / 4E6 bytes = 5E11 songs
1 song via ITMS = $1
Total cost to fill all ipods = 500 000 000 000 dollars
GDP of New Zealand = 108 520 000 000
Thus, it would take 5E11/1.08E11 = 4.62 years worth of New Zealand's national product to fill all ipods with music.
Wow! That is a lot of music!
Not sure why it's so hard to believe. (Score:5, Informative)
Anecdotally, I have gone through three ipods... a 3G which I carelessly dropped on concrete from about 5 feet, and a 5G which replaced the broken 3G, which I use every day. I was also given a nano as a gift, and I use that at the gym, so I don't have to worry about dropping the 5G. Looking around at the gym, I would also estimate 30% or so of the people in my line of sight at any time there are plugged into a nano or shuffle; In addition, ipods are a very common sight on desks during the day at work, too.
I don't think 100 million ipods sold to date is a particularly unbelievable number. If they told me there were 100 million ipods sold, and they're all still alive "in the wild," that would be pretty hard to swallow.
That's an impressive feat (Score:4, Interesting)
Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Nintendo DS: 39.8 million (total sales)
Gameboy: 69 Million (total sales)
Gameboy Advance: 77 million (total sales)
iPod: 100 million (total sales)
Cellphones: 2,000 million (currently in use)
I think I have a better understanding of why they built the iPhone...
Coincidence (Score:5, Funny)
That's a coincidence, I found mine on an Air France flight!
Re:But What About... (Score:4, Funny)
I have a dream that my iPods will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their case but by the content of their hard drive.
Let music ring.
Parent
Re:Comma chameleon, come and go, come and go (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Comma problems? (Score:4, Funny)
Well, now I know how to obfusticate any sensitive documentation. Just insert commas where they don't belong and a certain proportion of slashdot readers will waste valuable brain cycles attempting to decipher it. Whereas my loyal minions, having simpler brains, will ignore any and all punctuation marks and will implement my open source doomsday devices first.
Parent