iPod Mini Supply Increasing

[wrldwzrd89]

...the popular Apple iPod also uses the NAND type of flash memory...

Sorry buddy, that's incorrect. The iPod and iPod mini both use microdrives, a type of miniature HDD - NOT flash memory of any sort. I know you didn't originally post that - you copied it from elsewhere - but regardless, the person you quoted is WRONG.

 

[Mainyehc]

They solved this problem [static and jack issue with the iPod Mini] a long time ago, back in April. No need to worry about it anymore.

And... AND what about that defect in the 4G iPods? (you can hear the disk speeding up, THROUGH the headphones, and some STATIC... hmmmmm... I don't think they will fly off the shelves that much after people find out about that, and specially after Apple (and HP) start getting bad press!

Here's the link, from a respectable source (iPodlounge):
http://www.ipodlounge.com/articles_more.php?id=4776_0_8_0_M

Oh, and by the way, I own a 3G 20GB iPod and was thinking of selling it so I could buy a 4G, also 20GB, until I read about this... Apple didn't comment on that, so I'll wait, and I may eventually forget about it and stick with my 3G... it's €339 less in Apple's hands, and one person which won't find out about the wonderful world of the iPod (because I'm tired of *telling* people how great the iPod and the Mac are, it's easier to *show* 'em or to sell my stuff [selling iMac G4 17'', planning to buy a brand new iMac G5 20''] ) way to go, Apple......

 

[stoid]

Seeing as we are now approaching the end of September, when are we likely to get numbers from Apple on iPod sales?

 

[gensor]

Supertex

I work at Best Buy in Baton Rouge, and we just put out a display model of the mini again this week. We had taken it down so people would quit asking for them. We have five or six of them waiting to be sold for the first time in forever, as opposed to last week when they, along with the 4G 20's were on backorder.

Since you work at Best Buy, please give us your thoughts on how the new 4G has been moving off the shelves and how many 4Gs you been getting each week?

 

[gensor]

Sorry buddy

Sorry buddy, that's incorrect. The iPod and iPod mini both use microdrives, a type of miniature HDD - NOT flash memory of any sort. I know you didn't originally post that - you copied it from elsewhere - but regardless, the person you quoted is WRONG.

In addtion to the hard drive, I believe the iPOD uses a flash memory buffer so that music is loaded from the hard drive to flash so that music does not skip while jogging and other vibration.

 

[Colman]

Availability in Dublin, Ireland

Seems good: the mobile phone shops are selling them now, and every time I go near one there are people enquiring and poking at them. I bought mine retail, and the guy in the shop said they'd sold a lot of them. I know I've heard them sell out in one shop in the city centre. A lot of these shops are also pushing Powerbooks, and soon iBooks and iMacs... they don't sell other computers.

I suspect that Apple are seeding Europe with iPods in advance of opening the music store - and they probably make a little more money by selling them over here rather than in the US.


Colman

 

[VicMacs]

i think there is a need for a 10 gb ipod ... the mini is cool but not too good of a buy, i think theyre coming out with a lot of 4gb minis to finnally get them to everybody that wants one.. then theyll bump the hd space.. there is a 16gb gap in between ipod mini and ipod...

what about a 10 gb ipod for 199?

id jump to the occasion...

 

[Porchland]

Yeah, I agree. I think it's gonna be a helluva quarter...

Yep. Just to clarify, since you didn't mention it, Apple's fiscal year starts/ends toward the end of September. So the 860,000 number was for the third quarter (end of March through end of June), and the fourth quarter (which we're speculating about) would be the end of June through the end of September.

I was actually referring to the fourth quarter of the calendar year (Oct./Nov./Dec.) when I speculated that Apple might sell 2.5 million iPods in the fourth quarter. But then I saw the CBS Marketwatch report cited above that said Apple and HP intended to ship one million iPods a month starting in October.

If Apple was selling 860,000 units a quarter at -- just for the sake of argument -- a $20 margin per unit, that works out to a quarterly earnings of about $17.2 million on the iPod alone. If Apple maintains the same margin and sells a million units a month, the quarterly earnings on iPods jump to $60 million. It would still only accounts for about 10 percent of Apple's earnings (assuming a $20 margin per unit), but look how many new formerly-non-Apple hands the iPod is going to be in this time next year.

 

[Porchland]

Apple's pattern with the iPod has been to bump up the size and leave the price alone. I'm not properly geeked in current flash drive trends, but from a marketing standpoint, I could see Apple going to:

10 GB iPod mini ($249)
20 GB iPod ($299)
40 GB iPod ($399)
60 GB iPod ($499)

I could see Apple doing this in January, which would be a year after the iPod mini first came onto the market and right after the Christmas crush. Maybe later. It will depend a lot on the demand for the mini and the cost of the drives. If demand stays high, there's not much reason for Apple to update -- particularly if Apple can increase its margin on falling drive prices.

I would still expect a bump in the size of the mini rather than a price dip.

After reading the blurb at Macosrumors.com, I think iPod mini may be getting bump in size AND a price dip. Macosrumors says the iPod mini (4 GB) will drop to $199 and that Apple would be able to chose from available 5GB, 6GB and 8 GB one-inch drives on the market for a higher-capacity iPod mini.

I would revise my earlier guess to:

4 GB iPod mini ($199)
8 GB iPod mini ($249)
20 GB iPod ($299)
40 GB iPod ($399)
60 GB iPod ($499)

Given the improved supply of iPods, the early success of the HP deal, and (I expect) a great Christmas, the January keynote is looking more like an iPod rally.

 

[Bozola]

I would add..

04 GB iPod min ($199)

Apple's pattern with the iPod has been to bump up the size and leave the price alone. I'm not properly geeked in current flash drive trends, but from a marketing standpoint, I could see Apple going to:

10 GB iPod mini ($249)
20 GB iPod ($299)
40 GB iPod ($399)
60 GB iPod ($499)

 

[Charko]

I've got a bad feeling that this is not actually good news, b/c since when has there been good news on the supply front of anything? I think the change has been in demand, and that's all. People are sick of waiting, it's no longer new and cool, and people don't expect to be able to buy one and actually see it anytime soon.

Sorry to be the cynic.

No, I don't believe this is the case. I read a report ( I think it was MacWorld UK ) that talked of 70 thousand outstanding orders for iPods in Britain. This was two days ago.

In continental Europe - not least here in Germany - the iPod craze is just getting under way.

There have been estimates that within a matter of months, there will be about a million iPods sold worldwide every month!

 

[supertex]

Since you work at Best Buy, please give us your thoughts on how the new 4G has been moving off the shelves and how many 4Gs you been getting each week?

I'd love to give you an accurate idea, but up until this week, we've consistently run out of 4G 20's and minis. They've been drop-shipping them via FedEx whenever they can send them rather than sending them on our usual truck twice a week. So it's nearly impossible to tell how well they've been moving, except that people were begging us for 20s, and it was a rare occasion when, say we got four minis from FedEx in the morning, that they would be there when we closed. A surprising number of people would spring for the 40 when they found out we didn't have any 20s though.

 

[Porchland]

My guess for January MacWorld Expo.

1. iLife '05:
* iTunes 5 with a major update to the Music Videos and Movie Trailers section that has some new content -- possibly for a charge -- like an Apple-exclusive episodic series similar to the BMW film series. This would open the door for TV series, movies, etc., in the future.

* iMovie 5 with support for true widescreen editing.

* IDVD 5 with support for widescreen.

* iPhoto 5 with a better organizational scheme and support for iPod.

* GarageBand 2 with (who cares).

2. Lots of talk about the iMac, with maybe some sort of promotion announcement or making AirPort standard on all models.

3. "One More Thing": a 60 GB iPod with on-screen support for moving digital images directly from digital cameras through USB 2 and FireWire and the ability to preview the images on screen in black-and-white, which opens the door to a color screen down the road.

I don't think we'll see any changes in the iPod or the iPod mini before the end of this year.

 

[slu]

* GarageBand 2 with (who cares).

I care about the features in Garage Band 2 and so do all the people here:
http://www.icompositions.com/

More on topic, I think this is great news. So great that I ordered one for my sister for her birthday just after reading this. She is going to be so pumped up when her pink mini shows up in 5 days or so. She is a 15 year old and they love iPods. I am hoping this is the first step that leads to a iBook or iMac for when she goes to college in two years.

 

[Charko]

Porchland,

I agree, more or less, with your 'list' .

But I do so hope that there'll be a better graphics card for the iMac - if only as an option.

 

[pcharles]

I bought a silver one for my brother-in-law, it shipped the next day.

 

[pcharles]

Keeping the options down, keeps the price down. The card is actually a very good card and standard on all the upper level DELL machines. Remember, you do not buy an iMac for hardcore gaming. For general purpose gaming, it works perfectly well.

The other problems with faster cards are the size and the heat. Some of them have multiple fans and there simply is no room for the fans or extra heat.

Porchland,

I agree, more or less, with your 'list' .

But I do so hope that there'll be a better graphics card for the iMac - if only as an option.

 

[pcharles]

The profit margin would probably not justify the production. Beside that, the competition baseline is 15GB and Apple competes well with those on price and performance.

I'm waiting for the 60GB one. I'll probably need an 80GB by the time that is released.

i think there is a need for a 10 gb ipod ... the mini is cool but not too good of a buy, i think theyre coming out with a lot of 4gb minis to finnally get them to everybody that wants one.. then theyll bump the hd space.. there is a 16gb gap in between ipod mini and ipod...

what about a 10 gb ipod for 199?

id jump to the occasion...

 

[pcharles]

I say hogwash. The iPod mini will be upgraded, but jumping from 4 GB to 20 GB when the smallest iPod is 20 GB makes no sense at all. Also, there's an article on MacRumors that suggests the 60 GB hard drives needed for a 60 GB iPod aren't ready for production yet.

I agree. There is talk of 8GB microdrives, but I have heard nothing about larger ones. I'm sure the person means the small ipod will increase from 15 to 20GB, giving Apples iPod line as 20, 40, 60GB by Christmas. What would be cool is to go 20, 40, 80GB and give me a little room to expand because I use my iPod for documents as well as music and my (and my wifes combined) music collection is already over 50GB ay AAC128.

I suppose now that LacCie have the half-terabyte FW-800 drives , I should spend next summer reencoding everything to Apple Lossless and then sample some to MP3 for the car.

 

[bennok]

Too may Apple will never sell any of them. Especially not at $249.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

In addtion to the hard drive, I believe the iPOD uses a flash memory buffer so that music is loaded from the hard drive to flash so that music does not skip while jogging and other vibration.

I'd be surprised if it used a flash memory buffer, due to the write-cycle problem flash has. I would think the iPod uses SRAM as a memory buffer instead.

 

[yg17]

Going back to the Target thing, I work at Target and sometimes work in electronics, and I can tell you the employee was full of crap. We never, ever hear about iPod updates before they happen. We find out about them when Apple announces them, for those of us who don't pay attention, we find out about iPod updates when they get shipped to the store and we're like "Oh lookie, new iPods"

I'm at college now so I'm not working there, but when i was there over labor day weekend to drop in and say hi to everyone, we were still selling 3rd gen iPods and didn't even have displays or signs for the 4th gen. So there's no way this employee is telling the truth

 

[Dave00]

....Apple (AAPL: news, chart, profile) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ: news, chart, profile) planning to ship about 1 million iPods per month starting in October.

A million per MONTH! Holy sales increase Batman. That's awesome. The iPods must really be growing in terms of percentage of the bottom line, esp with the shortages in CPU's.

--Dave

 

[Dave00]

Sorry buddy, that's incorrect. The iPod and iPod mini both use microdrives, a type of miniature HDD - NOT flash memory of any sort. I know you didn't originally post that - you copied it from elsewhere - but regardless, the person you quoted is WRONG.

There is a flash memory buffer for the hard drive - which is why you can jog with it - that's probably what the article was referring to.

--D

 

[CholEoptera36]

This is great news for everyone who wants an iPod mini. Also this looks very good when you step back and look at Apple's situation. They're getting their products out now. iMac G5's were out pretty fast, the fastest I've seen Apple ship in a while on a new computer release. Although the mini's dont' do me much justice, I think they're waste of money compared to the 20GB and 40GB iPods.

Still always good to hear some good news from Apple for a change.