Originally posted by gerardrj
Noooo.
Steve stated that the iPod mini was going to compete for the high end flash market.
Steve specifically stated that the low-end flash market is not a place to play. Their research shows that people toss $50 players in the drawer and never use them because they hold so few songs.
From personal experience I know this to be the case. I was given a Rio 64MB player and only used it a few times, it was pointless to only carry 12 songs on it. I use my 5GB iPod most every day.
40 year old mom who's buying an ipod to work out with, or to carry her tunes around with is not looking at "flash" or hard drive" in an mp3 player. she has no clue what either mean. she's looking at how much the player costs, and how many songs it can hold. when she sees the ipod mini costing $249, and holds 1000 songs, she'll then take a look at this:
http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/ref=br_1_2/602-5351964-9981405?asin=B00009QSET
and then she'll say, "oh hey! this one holds 10 times as many songs, and it only costs 50 dollars more. and hey! look at that! it has a built in radio tuner with it!!"
she's not going to care if it has flash memory or a hard drive, so shut up and quit saying "high end flash player." she has no clue the mini ipod is a "high end flash player."
the point is, apple made an mp3 player that costs $50 less than a high end mp3 player, but holds significantly less songs than other mp3 players in it's price range. what the hell is the point in that? we're still not going to get the person who is only willing to spend </= $150.
steve showed a graph chart. he showed that the ipod has something like %37 of the market share in mp3 players. he said he wanted to go for the rest of the market share. he said nothing about "high end flash player market." there's a reason the ipod only has %37 market share. not everyone is willing to dish out more than 200 bucks for an mp3 player!!
we still HAVE NOT penetrated the entire mp3 player market spectrum. we're still only in the expensive, high end market range. and, it's worthless for its cost. it holds 50-75% LESS than similar products in its price range. i think most can agree that $249 and $299 is in the same price range. again, what is the point of this thing? steve said the point of it was to pierce the the rest of the market, but this can't do it. it's still just another ipod. an ipod that now is pretty much the same price, but holds a whole lot less songs. sure it may be smaller, but hey, its big brother already weighs less than two cd cases and is already almost too small for most men with big hands. it was already small enough. its price does not justify what it can do. it holds 4GB of songs. for $50 more, you can get an mp3 player from a different company that hold 40 GB of songs.
and btw, i don't care what YOU want in an mp3 player. i don't care that you wasted your money on a 64 MB mp3 player. there's a market out there for somoene who wants an mp3 player to hold 2 or 3 hours worth of music. i'm in that market! and i'll be buying something from that market very soon. steve said he wanted my market share, but he's not going to get it now.
i'd be fine if apple didn't try to advertise this for the lower end mp3 market. because it's not a low end mp3 player. it's a high end mp3 player, with low storage capacities, and the same price as other mp3 players that hold more songs.
all apple did was re-relase the original ipod with a new look and 50 bucks off. show me how it's different. this will not help gain market share.