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Media (Apple) Businesses Media Apple

100 Million iPods 241

Posted by samzenpus 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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100 Million iPods More

100 Million iPods

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  • Obligatory. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @04:32PM (#18668199)
    "No wireless. More space than a Zune. Lame."
    - CmdrBallmer

  • Lame. (Score:4, Funny)

    by cgrayson ( 22160 ) * on Monday April 09, 2007 @04:35PM (#18668227) Homepage
    No wireless. Less space than 100 million nomads. Lame.

  • "Sold" probably includes them all (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @04:35PM (#18668229)
    Generally the management of these numbers is designed to make sales numbers look good. There is nothing stopping warantee replacement units being reflected as a zero-dollar sale, so long as you don't mess with the actual revenue numbers.

    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: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by RedElf ( 249078 )
      Status symbols only serve the purpose of moving money from the working class back to the wealthy.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by mr_matticus ( 928346 )
      Warranty replacements aren't sales. You're right that they *could* be reported that way, but they're not. If Apple issues a press release saying that they've SOLD their 100 millionth iPod today, they mean that someone(s) have bought 100 million iPods for money. They really don't have any need to inflate the figure with a deceptive practice--this water mark would be reached within a few months anyway, and it's not like they need anything to drive sales.

      If the press release had said that they'd SHIPPED the

      • Re:"Sold" probably includes them all (Score:5, Insightful)

        by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @06:28PM (#18669275)
        It all depends on how the numbers are reported.

        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.

  • Sooo (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Adambomb ( 118938 ) * on Monday April 09, 2007 @04:36PM (#18668233) Journal

    "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."
    A) More accurate than what?

    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)

      by Adambomb ( 118938 ) * on Monday April 09, 2007 @04:39PM (#18668285) Journal
      As opposed to reading statements of the obvious, just absorb the details yourself and draw your own conclusions from Apple's Press Release [apple.com].

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by George Rypysc 3 ( 917245 )
      I second that; it's a statement of fact from a publicly traded company. It's impressive, but predictable given their previously published numbers showing they had sold 88.7 million total at the end of last year:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ipod_sales.svg [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Aqua OS X ( 458522 )
      Agreed.
      Moreover, I wonder how many of us replaced and upgraded our various cassette or CD players. I've easily owned 4 or 5 walkmen and several diskmen, and countless car and home players. It's not like Sony's sales numbers were grounded on devices that no one replaced. Overtime those product lines gained new features, grew smaller / lighter, needed fewer batteries, adopted new form factors, etc. Moreover, like large iPods, they were devices that had movable parts and crapped out from time to time.

      There is

  • A bit of perspective (Score:5, Interesting)

    by remove office ( 871398 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @04:38PM (#18668261) Homepage
    Let's put this in perspective. Not all of these buyers were American, and many of them have probably owned more than one iPod, but the population of the United States is slightly over 300 million. And Apple has apparently sold 100 million.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by metlin ( 258108 ) *
      That's true.

      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.

      (I'm not so much into the music 24/7 thing; I like keeping my ears open, and the Shuffle was useful because it was simple, durable and also doubled as a USB drive. Regular iPods and the Nano have always seemed a tad flimsy to me.)

      So, technically, I purchased 4 iPods according to Apple. There you go, skewing of stats, right there.

      • Re:A bit of perspective (Score:4, Insightful)

        by osu-neko ( 2604 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @05:44PM (#18668927)

        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?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
      Let's put this in perspective. Not all of these buyers were American, and many of them have probably owned more than one iPod, but the population of the United States is slightly over 300 million. And Apple has apparently sold 100 million.

      A bit of perspective coming your way too. Not all of those 300 million own any music player. A sizable chunk of them are kids below 4, or old people living in remote villages that have never worked on a computer, let alone know how to work with a digital music player.

      So wh

  • The value of good user interface design... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The Media Mechanic ( 1084283 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @04:38PM (#18668263)
    In my opinion the reason the iPod succeeded in the marketplace is the tight integration of hardware and software... the whole system just works. You don't have to worry about, missing DLLs, bad firmware that causes the interface to become unresponsive, or other strange errors that manifest themselves on competing digital music players. I used to have a no-brand hard disk based player that would cause a horrible screeching noise in the earphones whenever the disk spun up to access the next chunk of music data. Never had this problem on my iPod. Also, for example, when you pull your headphone plug out of the earphone jack, my iPod automatically goes into Pause mode. They obviously put a sensor on the earphone jack that detects the presence of something plugged in, and tied that into the firmware... this provides a seamless intuitive interface to the end-use. This is why they have sold 100 million players, and profited from it, and rightly so. Highly paid and well motivated creative engineers will always trounce cheap, carelessly designed and manufactured, knock-offs.

    • I Don't Love You (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dogtanian ( 588974 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @04:52PM (#18668427) Homepage

      I used to have a no-brand hard disk based player that would cause a horrible screeching noise in the earphones whenever the disk spun up.
      The company returned this guy's iPod with the following message: "Not faulty. Supposed 'horrible screeching noise' turned out to be My Chemical Romance's latest single."

    • Re:The value of good user interface design... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JohnnyComeLately ( 725958 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @05:07PM (#18668547) Homepage Journal
      Yeppers. I had a Toshiba GigABeat and ended up taking it back to get the 80Gb Video. It just works well. No lock into their download format or archaic DRM. Accessories are plentiful (the main reason I switched back...I had a Nano before) and function is intuitive. Like you mention, I don't even need to take it out of my pocket to "pause" it when I am done riding/running/whatever and don't want the battery to drain from leaving it on by accident.

      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.

    • Re:The value of good user interface design... (Score:4, Informative)

      by joek1010 ( 980753 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @05:42PM (#18668901)
      "bad firmware"

      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=30 4508). Switching to iTunes 7 caused major problems for a lot of people (me included). For about 2 weeks I basically had a bricked iPod; I couldn't restore because there were major problems with the iTunes 7 and its new integrated iPod management.

      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.
    • In my opinion the reason the iPod succeeded in the marketplace is the tight integration of hardware and software... the whole system just works.

      Yep, PortalPlayer that designed the OS/Software/Chipset of the iPod did a good job. Too bad Apple's iTunes has always sucked ass, but the iPod itself makes up for it, but again, not an Apple design. :)

    • Microsoft can be dethroned (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Uksi ( 68751 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @07:08PM (#18669557) Homepage
      You're so right on the money.

      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.
    • Highly paid and well motivated creative engineers will always trounce cheap, carelessly designed and manufactured, knock-offs.

      I'd say highly paid and well-motivated creative engineers working together with highly paid and well-motivated creative designers will produce a good product. I've seen, and there have been several recent Slashdot stories on, the results of projects where engineers are in total charge (note: IAAE - I am an Engineer). Usually it'll have every feature you would want under the sun,

  • Why so hard to believe? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 2nd Post! ( 213333 ) <gundbear@p[ ]ell.net ['acb' in gap]> on Monday April 09, 2007 @04:38PM (#18668271) Homepage
    Even with a failure rate of 10% (which is extraordinary), that is still 90m iPods sold.

    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.
    • I think the 1st generation ipod probably hit 50% failure rate legitimately. Every person I know with a 1st-gen ipod has basically had their batteries died by the 2nd year. Including myself.
      • I bought a 1G iPod a few months after they came out. I eventually gave it to my brother after I got a 5G one, and AFAIK the battery still works--with the caveats that it won't play more than 5 hours straight off a charge anymore, and it'll go from full to flat in less than 4 days.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by adisakp ( 705706 )
      Even with a failure rate of 10% (which is extraordinary), that is still 90m iPods sold.

      I've had 4 non-iPod MP3 players and my failure rate was 100%. All four of them broke -- most shortly after their 90 day warrantee. Two of them were gifts to other people and I feel bad for not buying them iPods now. One was a Creative and the other three were off-brand.

      Since then, I learned my lesson. I've bought an iPod Shuffle and more recently an iPod Nano. Both work just fine and the Shuffle is about 2.5 yea

  • Probably at least 5M units broken... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Monday April 09, 2007 @04:38PM (#18668273)
    If we assume a failure rate of 5%...

    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?)
    • Any kind of portable electronics have a pretty high rate of loss, theft and accidental damage. iPods probably have a higher rate of theft than, say, mobile phones because they're easily transferrable and can't be disabled by the network. Compared to other brand MP3 players, they're a bigger theft target because of their popularity.
    • 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?

      My superior MP3 player, the iRiver H320, has an internal battery. Luckily, it happens to be the same size as the batteries from the 1st and 2nd generation iPods, so it's easy and cheap to get a replacement. It even uses the same electrical connector (though the pins have to be swapped).

      With all the different iPod

  • Their questions are totally irrelevant... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by XxtraLarGe ( 551297 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @04:40PM (#18668289) Journal
    Apple said they sold 100 million iPods. What difference does it make how many were replacement iPods for broken or stolen units? If anything, that would only make the case that much stronger for the popularity of the iPod: People were willing to buy another one to replace a broken or stolen one. What does he mean when he says "how many are sitting in drawers"? What does that have to do with anything? I'm sure any portable music player would be happy if they sold 10% as many and they were all sitting in drawers. This entire article is a troll...
    • Not to mention that you could say the exact same thing about a Walkman (the tape-and-radio kind). I can't tell you how many Walkmans (Walkmen?) I went through as a kid. And I'll tell you that for all the crap Apple gets for batteries, it's still cheaper to pay someone $25 to change out the rechargeable every 2 years than to constantly feed it AA's like my old Walkman :)

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by that this is not und ( 1026860 )
        With your Walkman, you could have bought replacement rechargable batteries for it every two years, at a much lower cost, and had the same hassle of having to plug it in regularly to keep it charged. In fact, you could have had two or three spare sets of rechargable batteries and had extended play times on trips.

        I'm just sayin' because you seem to lack perspective.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by MightyYar ( 622222 )

          I'm just sayin' because you seem to lack perspective.

          Ouch. Well, you seem to be lacking the perspective that a Walkman never normally needs to be plugged in, while an iPod needs to be plugged in to sync. Might as well charge while syncing. You also seem to forget just how bad rechargeable batteries were back in the 80's. I tried 'em, and found them to be way too temperamental. They had "memory" problems, so you had to run them all the way down before charging, and good "conditioning" chargers didn't exist at a reasonable price.

  • Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)

    by chebucto ( 992517 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @04:42PM (#18668331) Homepage
    1E8 x 2E10 bytes (avg) = 2E18 bytes = 2 exabytes

    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!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by tzhuge ( 1031302 )
      This is what the RIAA will demand from world leaders after they have completed their dooms-day device, the DRMStar. Sources claim (possibly /. sources) liquid magma and freaking sharks with lasers strapped to their heads are involved.
    • You forgot one number. Odds of all iPods being filled with music purchased on-line, zero. If Apple iTunes actually sold that much music they wouldn't add one zero to the music sales numbers they'd add two. Obvious few iPods are filled with music but it does indicate the real size of the download community especially when a lot of people would like have a bigger iPod. If the average was just 10% full there's still a big download community. If the number is 50% then it's massive. The other issue is we're just

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lelitsch ( 31136 )
      > Total cost to fill all ipods = 500 000 000 000 dollars

      Total songs sold through the iTunes store = 2 500 000 000
      Dollar amount the RIAA is trying to extort = 497 525 000 000 dollars

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vought ( 160908 )
      Thus, it would take 5E11/1.08E11 = 4.62 years worth of New Zealand's national product to fill all ipods with music.


      Yes, but how many Libraries of Congress is that?
    • I have 40 iTunes Store songs... over my collection of approx 1k songs.

      By Apple's own admission this is almost double the average of 22 out of 1000 songs [apple.com]

      The overwhelming majority use their music players with music they have ripped themselves (or copied from other sources.)

      For this reason no one took any notice of the napster adverts which showed how expensive it was to fill an iPod with purchased music. (Although what is the price of paying nearly $20 every single month until you no longer want your entire

  • Find it hard to believe? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by That's Unpossible! ( 722232 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @04:47PM (#18668377)
    As a publicly-traded company, it would be pretty hard to fudge these numbers and get away with it, but I guess anything is possible.

    The guy that wrote the article sounds extremely bitter... did he design the Zune or something? Waaa waaa how many of those replaced old ipods or were stolen? WHO CARES? The press release is for ipods sold, not ipods currently in use. 100 million sold is amazing, no matter how you slice it.

  • Not sure why it's so hard to believe. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Americano ( 920576 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @04:49PM (#18668401)

    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.
    The press release doesn't say that there are 100 million units presently in use by 100 million people around the world today, now, right here. It says that they've moved 100 million ipods. Some percentage of that 100 million has surely been broken, been stolen, been lost, been destroyed, etc. Some percentage is probably sitting on a desktop somewhere and almost never gets used. But the total number sold apparently is over 100 million.

    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.
    • You made me stop and think with your anecdote. I am personally on iPod #1 (a mini that works fine), but I have purchased a hdd-based one as a gift to my girlfriend, a 30 GB video to replace it when it got dropped, and two Shuffles as gifts. That's one lower middle class guy, five iPods.

      Methinks the Slashdot naysayers have forgotten about the Shuffle.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtrifts ( 61627 )
        And I've bought four 30 gig video Ipods. One for myself and three as gifts, since December 2005. I'm also not made of money - these were the "big" Xmas gifts of their respective years for my wife and daughters.

        I have no difficulty accepting those numbers have sold.

        And yes - one of those video IPods was replaced under warranty. It was the one given the my youngest daughter - who has probably lost the replacement unit too.

        Which just means my daughter drops stuff and loses it - not that Apple is a bad manufact
  • Really, Apple have sold a lot. Why would they lie, we know it is the most successful mp3 player on the planet, why must everything be nitpicked. In this case, its a huge conspiracy, Apple might not have sold a hundred million, they could be one or two off the mark. Shit they are still selling them now so any inaccuracies have been covered by today's sales. Talk about slow news day on the writers part. Apple puts out a fairly unremarkable press piece and somebody ponders whether they are telling the who

  • It doesn't matter how many were replaced. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by suv4x4 ( 956391 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @04:51PM (#18668419)
    The statistic is about "sold", so even if I replace my iPod every day, I put money out of my pocket and buy a new iPod.

    Apple profits from selling the hardware, not from the active userbase, in fact, they benefit from smaller userbase (less loss/load on iTunes) that refreshes its hardware often.

    Even if it was one single crazy guy, who bought 100 million iPods, Apple doesn't give a damn.

  • That's an impressive feat (Score:4, Interesting)

    by vivaoporto ( 1064484 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @05:01PM (#18668499)
    Taking in account that it took 20 years [tvhistory.tv] for televisions to sell about 70 millions sets on US (source [tvhistory.tv]. I don't have stats for radio and phone sets, but 100 million units is an impressive feat regardless of substitution pieces or upgrades.

    • Re:That's an impressive feat (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bogjobber ( 880402 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @07:33PM (#18669693)
      You also have to take into account that TV's weren't widely available until nearly ten years after they were first introduced (and were essentially banned for five years), the US population is 60% larger than it was even at the end of the time period you quote, the US is much more affluent than it was back then, and of course a very significant number of those iPods were sold outside the US. Still impressive, but very difficult to compare. If TV had been able to jump to the mass market the way products today can, no doubt it would've achieved widespread adoption much faster.

  • Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ObligatoryUserName ( 126027 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @05:07PM (#18668543) Journal
    Here's a comparison I put together from Wikipedia/Google.

    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...

  • I am pretty certain this number relates to how many iPods Apple has sold to retailers; not how many those retailers have sold to the public. Wal-Mart places an order for iPod and bam! There's another 100,000 units 'sold'. And are we talking about all iPods here? Some of those 1st gen Shuffles are practically given away by some retailers (i.e. all orders over $499 get a free iPod Shuffle!).
    • Yeah! Wake me up when the headlines read "100 million iPods ... in space! [slashdot.org]"
    • So? Why would Walmart place an order for 100,000 more units if they had tens of thousands sitting on shelves? They'll order more product that they can move, not just because they haven't ordered any in a while.

      Let the retailers give away the shuffles. Who cares? They already paid Apple for them; they can do whatever they want.

      Apple has sold 100 million iPods. That's the bottom line. Some of those were given away for free in raffles and contests. Some of those were bought by schools and given to stude

    • You raise a point that Apple might be stuffing the inventory with retailers. After all some manufacturers ship more product than actually sold and report the shipped numbers. (i.e. Sony PS3, Microsoft Xbox 360). Unlike the Xbox 360 and the PS3, many iPods are going to consumers and not sitting on the shelves. Before this quarter Apple had announced they had sold 88 million iPods. So they have sold 12 million more worldwide. I don't find that so hard to believe.

      Unlike inventory and distribution in th

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mstone ( 8523 )
      Yes, vendors can push inventory onto retailers.. it's called 'flooding the channel'. Microsoft may have done that with Zunes to meet its projected sales goals, based on its sales numbers per month for the year.

      There are two reasons why Apple probably hasn't done so, though:

      First, you can't flood the channel continuously. About all you can do is collapse the sales you would have gotten next quarter into this month's sales report.

      Say I'm a vendor shipping a product whose market demand is a million units pe

  • Why is everyone so surprised? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AgentX24 ( 797752 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @05:16PM (#18668655)
    Why is everyone shocked at the total of 100 million iPods sold and calling conspiracy over it? After all, the PS2 had over 115 million units shipped worldwide by December 2006 [wikipedia.org]. Do people not believe that figure?
    • People are weird when it comes to something popular. People hate Duke basketball, Windows, and now the iPod. There's even a hybrid car backlash going on right now.

  • My wife and I have 5 between us... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rthille ( 8526 ) <web-slashdotNO@SPAMrangat.org> on Monday April 09, 2007 @05:25PM (#18668725) Homepage Journal

    iPod - 40GB (3/4th gen?)
    iPod Mini (1st gen)
    iPod Nano (2nd gen)
    iPod Shuffle (1st gen)
    iPod Shuffle (2nd gen)

    I've been tempted to get the 5.5gen iPod, but I think I'll wait for widescreen.

  • Slashdot editors need to get over their iPod hate (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hattig ( 47930 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @05:35PM (#18668817) Journal
    Nice, select the one negative article about this news. Well done. Lame.

    Given that 80 million iPods have been sold in the last two years - wait, Apple said they had sold 10m in early 2005 - so 90 million iPods in the last two years, I'd guess that the vast majority of them are in use (i.e., they work and aren't under the sofa missing) still (even if they were stolen!).

    My iPod nano is 20 months old and I use it all the time still.

    I bet that over time less than 10 million iPods sold were due to a previous iPod breaking and being out of warranty. Probably less than 5 million. Likely less than 2 million. Apple will sell than many in a couple of weeks, so it's a rather pointless argument anyway.

    Anyway, why doesn't this thinking apply to other manufacturers? Sony - 120m or so PS2s for example. Sold == Sold in anybody's book.

  • Coincidence (Score:5, Funny)

    by BasilBrush ( 643681 ) on Monday April 09, 2007 @06:19PM (#18669185)

    * What's the exact figure of how many iPods have been lost (I once left mine on an Air France flight) or stolen?


    That's a coincidence, I found mine on an Air France flight!

  • Price Point (Score:2, Informative)

    by RetroRichie ( 259581 )
    This doesn't really surprise me. I know Google has purchased thousands of shuffles just as corporate giveaways, and I don't doubt that many other companies have done the same. The price point of the shuffles and nanos is so low that anyone can get their hands on them. And most people who have the hard disk-based iPods seem to have a smaller version as well for the gym, or whatever. Heck, we have received two shuffles as corporate giveaways, and we haven't even resold them. They're so small that we're j
  • I just got my iPod a week ago. Got an 8GB black Nano. Love it! I wanted a solid state player that could store at least 1,000 tracks and have enough room for podcasts. The Nano fit the bill for me.

  • 5 were purchased by my household (Score:3, Interesting)

    by notaprguy ( 906128 ) * on Monday April 09, 2007 @08:11PM (#18669959) Journal
    1, an original 40 GB model, died an early death. Then I bought a mini which I use once every three months in my car. I bought my wife a mini for Christmas two years ago and she never used it - not once. Then I bought her a Nano and she used it 2-3 times. Neither of us have ever bought any music through iTunes. All of my music was ripped from my CD collection or purchased from more reasonably priced online stores (with better music selections). iPod's are cool...for about give minutes. Then I want to go back to listening to NPR or actually talking to other people.

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